The Transfer Agreement (35 page)

The question was: Who would stop him, and how?

The passions of Palestine, its dreams and disappointments, all focused on a single man. When Arlosoroff departed London in the first week of June, he was returning to a land whose potentials he loved. Too few in Palestine would accept the clarity of his ideas. But Arlosoroff had visions from the beginning.

When he was only twenty-two years old, in
1922,
Arlosoroff first visited Palestine and encountered the reality of a land inhabited by one people of the present while cherished by another people of the past. The young Zionist wrote, "Let us not overlook the following fact: there is in the country a massive [Arab] nation ... and it makes no difference if we call it a national movement or not. ... We have only one way: the road of peace; only one national policy: a policy of mutual understanding .... Peace and agreement cannot grow overnight. The road to it is long and requires much work."
⁶⁵

For years Arlosoroff had sought peace by the forces of reason. All efforts failed. In June
1932,
one year after becoming the political secretary of the Jewish Agency, Arlosoroff wrote a disconsolate letter to Weizmann, predicting that soon only two options would remain: "narrowing down the geographical area [in Palestine] in which Zionism will materialize." That failing, a man of peace such as Arlosoroff in desperation advocated a brief coup, hoping that this position of power could result in coexistence.
⁶⁶

But such transient suggestions as armed revolt were outmoded because the German crisis would at last allow him to create realities with money where reason had failed.

As Arlosoroff traveled across Europe, rumors were everywhere. He was sealing a pact with Hitler, and forging a new binational political party with pro-Zionist Arabs, and was even ready to publish an Arab-Zionist newspaper. Shortly after Arlosoroff left Poland in early June, the Polish Revisionist newspaper
Die Welt
accused Arlosoroff of trying to make peace with Hitler and warned; "Get off the Jewish stage, Dr. Arlosoroff!" On June
9,
the Palestinian Revisionist newspaper
Hazit Haam
declared, "At a time when the people of Israel in Palestine and abroad are in a defensive war of honor against Germany ... an official of the Jewish Agency suggests not only a cancellation of the boycott but also a promise of a market for German imports .... This should be viewed as putting a knife in the back of the Jewish people while attempting to stretch out the hand of friendship to the Hitler government."
⁶⁷

The animosity of the Jewish masses, the desperation of German Jewry, and the momentus failure or success that might emerge within the coming days could not help but cast the thirty-four-year-old Arlosoroff into a deep depression. As he journeyed home to Palestine, Arlosoroff's gloom was only worsened by a sequence of missed trains, lost wallets, and strange delays. Everything had gone wrong, and Arlosoroff felt the omens were not good.
⁶⁸

Arlosoroff had hoped to meet his wife Sima in Egypt and enjoy the train ride back to Tel Aviv together. But the mishaps forced him to board a ship in Naples that didn't arrive in Egypt until June
13.
The superstitious Arlosoroff asked Sima to instead meet him at
6:00 A.M.
on the fourteenth at a Palestine train station along the way.
⁶⁹

Arlosoroff and Sima arrived in Tel Aviv at
9:00 A.M.
on June
14
and went straight to their Tel Aviv apartment at
82
Yarkon. There Arlosoroff hugged his children for the first time in over a month. Later that day, he visited his mother. And he conferred with various Zionist officials. Throughout the day, his dejection remained clearly visible to those he met.
⁷⁰

That night, Arlosoroff tried to find solace playing with his infant son Shaul. One of Shaul's favorite games was to remove his father's ring from his finger and replace it. But this day, when Shaul removed the ring, he replaced it on his mother's finger. Arlosoroff cried out, "Not yet."
⁷¹

On June
I5,
Arlosoroff, still tired from his travels, continued meeting on the transfer question.
It
is rumored that among those he spoke with was Sam Cohen.

The next day, June
16,
Arlosoroff lunched with High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope. After lunch, they visited a village that Arlosoroff said would become a major center for transferred German Jewish youngsters. At the end of the afternoon, Arlosoroff went back to Tel Aviv, arriving at
5:15
P.M.,
in time for
shabbat,
the Jewish Sabbath.
⁷²

At about sunset, Sima and Arlosoroff tried to soothe their nerves with a quiet dinner at the Kaetedan boardinghouse on the beach north of Tel Aviv.
It
was a favored establishment of Mapai leaders.
⁷³
After dinner, Arlosoroff wanted to walk along the deserted seashore around the Kaetedan, but Sima was afraid. Just that day, the Revisionist newspaper
Hazit Haam
had issued what many considered a public death threat. The article attacked what it called an alliance between Hitler and the Mapai party engineered by Arlosoroff. "There will
be
no forgiveness for those who have for greed sold out the honor of their people to madmen and anti-Semites .... The Jewish people have always known how to size up the betrayers of the nation and their followers, and it will know today how to react to this crime."
⁷⁴

Arlosoroff had lived with threats for some time. When informed in early
1933
that he was at the top of a fanatic Revisionist group's hit list, Arlosoroff at first refused protection, saying, "No Jew would kill
me."
Not long after, however, Sima heard footsteps outside their door late at night. Situated as they were in a Jewish neighborhood, they concluded the prowlers were Jewish. So Arlosoroff finally agreed to post a guard outside his home. The threat from the Arab side became equally real, forcing Arlosoroff to carry a pistol while traveling through Arab areas. But before leaving for Germany, Arlosoroff had deposited his pistol with a friend, and had not yet reclaimed it. So on the night of June
16,
Arlosoroff was unarmed.
⁷⁵

The moon was not out that night. As Sima and Arlosoroff began walking, little could
be
seen except the red running lights of freighters in the Mediterranean to the west and the sparkling crescent of lights formed by Tel Aviv and Jaffa to the south. Before long they had strolled so far north there was nothing but solitude, sand dunes, and the foamy fizzles of the sea. But then Sima noticed two men following, a short one and a tall one who seemed to waddle as he walked.
⁷⁶

Soon the two men quickened their pace and passed Sima and Arlosoroff. Sima was frightened, but Arlosoroff reassured her. "Don't worry, they're Jews." The two men were now ahead, but they then stopped. The taller one began to urinate into the sand as the Arlosoroffs came closer.
⁷⁷
Finally, the Arlosoroffs saw the lights of a distant Jewish housing development. They left the seashore and meandered through the new neighborhood, discussing the construction that everywhere rose from the sand. An hour later, they returned to the beach, arms entwined, and began walking south, staying close to the waterline. After a while the two men again appeared, walking slowly so the Arlosoroffs could not help but pass. When they did, the two men sped up and in turn passed the couple. This passing and falling back occurred several times as the Arlosoroffs continued walking south.
⁷⁸

When the Arlosoroffs neared a Moslem cemetery on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, Sima noticed a donkey carcass lying on the shore. And then, just ahead at the cemetery, the two men stopped entirely, turned, and positioned themselves on either side of the Arlosoroffs' path. As the Arlosoroffs passed between the men, the taller one shined a flashlight in Chaim's face and said,
"kamah hashaa"—an
erroneous construction of the Hebrew phrase for "What time is it?"
⁷⁹

Just then the other man pulled out a Browning automatic and a bullet flashed into Arlosoroff's chest. He dropped to all fours, his life spilling onto the sand. The two assailants fled into the dunes as Sima screamed in horror, "Help, help! Jews shot him!" The bleeding Arlosoroff immediately corrected her, saying, "No, Sima, no."
⁸⁰

At first Sima struggled to help Arlosoroff crawl. Finally she helped him stand. Sima supporting him on her shoulders, they walked toward some people summoned by the shot. As bystanders took Arlosoroff's bleeding body, Sima ran back to the Kaetedan to call police and an ambulance. As she raced into the lobby, she cried, "They've shot Chaim" and begged for help. Meanwhile, people on the beach carried Arlosoroff to the roadway and began looking for someone to take him to a hospital. But this was shabbat,
10:30
P.M.
No automobile traffic. In desperation, a bystander sounded the horn of a parked car. The car's owner came out and at once agreed to drive Arlosoroff to the hospital.
⁸¹

Arlosoroff was lying on the gravel of the roadway, still bleeding, his jacket under his head as passersby kept asking who had done the shooting. Arlosoroff answered, "I will tell everything, but let me rest." Finally the automobile was brought around and Arlosoroff was helped in and rushed to Hadassah Hospital]. Along the way, Arlosoroff remained coherent, but still refused to answer any questions.
⁸²

At the hospital, the doctors were
ill
prepared and indecisive. This being shabbat, there was no surgeon on duty. Arlosoroff reached the emergency room at eleven-thirty—about an hour after being shot. The first surgeon arrived before midnight but would not operate until joined by three other specialists still en route. While waiting, the staff tried to make a weakened Arlosoroff comfortable. By this time, word had spread throughout Tel Aviv. The loved-hated son of Zionism had been shot. Political friends and associates began gathering around his bed. They and the police asked him question after question. But Arlosoroff was too faded to respond cogently.
⁸³

They were all helpless. Nothing could be done. Arlosoroff had just a few powerless moments remaining. No one expected him to speak. But with the last air in his lungs he turned toward the mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, looked up, and whispered in soft tones, "Look what they have done to me."
⁸⁴

And then he died.

L
ESS
IMPORTANT
than the death of Arlosoroff became the question: Who killed him? In London, members of the House of Commons immediately demanded an inquiry. In Warsaw, all Jewish newspapers featured black borders of mourning on their front pages. Memorial services were held in Vienna, Paris, and many other cities. Rewards for the capture of Arlosoroff's assailants were posted throughout Palestine. His funeral was attended by the largest assemblage in Palestine's history, between
70,000
and
I00,000
persons. Arab and Jewish leaders alike and the entire consular corps paid their homage to the man generally assumed to be the brightest ascendant of the Zionist movement.
¹

Quickly the Revisionists emerged as the logical, and to a larger extent, the most suitable culprits. Police squads raided the apartments of leading Revisionist figures, including Abba Achimeir, the editor of
Hazit Haam,
who had so vocally editorialized for Arlosoroff's murder as recently as the day of the crime.
²
There they found a Betar activist named Abraham Stavsky, who had arrived from Poland just a few months earlier but was now eager to return. Sima Arlosoroff identified Stavsky as the man who held the flashlight, and Polish Revisionist Avi Rosenblatt as the one who fired the pistol. Some weeks later, Abba Achimeir himself was accused of masterminding the plot.
³

Whether or not Stavsky, Rosenblatt, and Achimeir were the actual murderers will never be known. Sima Arlosoroff was under tremendous pressure from Mapai leaders to maintain her damaging testimony despite doubts.
⁴
In the months that followed, the murder investigation was besieged by bought-and-paid-for Arab confessions, false witnesses, manufactured evidence, bizarre theories, dramatic revelations, and unanswerable questions. Within a year, Rosenblatt, the alleged triggerman, and Achimeir, the accused ring-leader, were both acquitted due to conflicting evidence. Stavsky, however, was found guilty and condemned to death. A long appeal finally released him on an evidence technicality.
⁵