The Transfer Agreement (64 page)

Nahum Goldmann, Radical Zionist and Geneva conference organizer, agreed that the German Jewish crisis would have to be raised, probably in a special session, but that the boycott itself should not be mentioned.
²⁵
Goldmann, like Wise, wanted the worldwide declaration to be pronounced at Geneva and nowhere else.

Dr. Arthur Ruppin, one of the principal transfer negotiators, insisted that "at this Congress we cannot confine ourselves to reproaching the German government for its sins against the German Jews. Our criticism must be coupled with a constructive scheme [for developing Palestine]. The relation between the two must be well balanced. We must not forget that the execution of any constructive plan presupposes goodwill on the part of the German government ....
If
we fail to find the right solution, the German government will solve the Jewish problem in its own one-sided way."
²⁶

The Actions Committee finally decided to discuss the issue of German Jewry at a special session. But any specific plans or resolutions would be made by a special "German Commission," which would make a decision
for
the Congress.
²⁷
The Revisionists accepted this because under the rules, if they disagreed with the commission majority, they could submit a minority report and insist upon a floor vote to see which was acceptable. This was the best method of ensuring that Revisionist boycott demands would finally confront the delegates.

The decisions to discuss the German question openly and appoint a commission were preliminary victories for the effort to mobilize the Zionist
movement against Nazi Germany. But Mapai leaders at the August
I7
Actions Committee session felt the most urgent question was not Hitler; it was Jabotinsky. They wanted to quash all discussion and action against the Nazis and instead devote all energies to combating Revisionism. This in mind, Mapai leader David Ben-Gurion recited a list of Jewish Palestinian "acts of terror" and demanded a second special commission on the assassination of Arlosoroff—even before the murder trial in Jerusalem concluded. Stephen Wise, representing the American Zionists on the Actions Committee, needed Revisionists to enforce the boycott within the Zionist movement; and, of course, so long as the Revisionists remained in the Zionist power structure, Weizmann would not accept the presidency. So Wise counseled against any such investigative commission. Recriminations, said Wise, had no business at a Congress with such important matters to decide.
²⁸
Nazism was the crisis, not Revisionism.

Then Berl Katznelson, one of Ben-Gurion's closest associates, asked to be recognized for an urgent motion. "I regret not taking part in the discussion about the situation of German Jews," said Katznelson. "I felt, however, that I could not participate in a discussion about German Jewry before delivering the message which my friends from Palestine have entrusted to me." Katznelson then read a prepared statement: "The murder of Arolosoroff has revealed to us the terrible abyss that confronts the Zionist Organization. Thorough investigation has confirmed our fears .... Within one of the parties which belong to the Zionist Organization, within the Revisionist party, there exist terrorist groups. I emphasize:
groups,
not
a
group.
²⁹

"The very existence of such groups is a heavy blow to the Zionist movement, to its moral character, and to its political driving power. The existence of this impurity in our midst is a national disgrace, a betrayal of the culture of our generations ....
It
is the foremost duty of the Zionist movement ... to extirpate this evil from our midst before it begins to destroy our hopes."
³⁰

Hours of vicious and accusatory debate ensued, but the decision to appoint an anti-Revisionist commission was postponed.
³¹
The Revisionists had survived, and their anti-Hitler program still had a chance in a floor fight.

But Mapai might yet prevent that floor fight if only somehow the Revisionists could be excluded from the Congress
presidium.
The presidium was the ruling coalition panel created by the Actions Committee. Seated at the front of the Congress hall, it was empowered to decide parliamentary points, recognize speakers, and rule on agenda questions. Normally, the presidium was constituted according to relative party strength.

So a renewed smear campaign against Revisionism was waged by Mapai leaders in the anterooms and newspapers of Prague. The hope was to sway delegates to support Mapai's demand that the Revisionists
be
excluded from the presidium. Ben-Gurion told reporters that Revisionism was nothing more than "Hitlerite pseudo-Zionism" and that Labor's struggle against it was "a fight for life and death in the strongest sense of the word."
³²

The public denigrations were picked up by wire services and printed in the newspapers of the world. The Jew-vs.-Jew antagonism disheartened Jews and sympathetic non-Jews alike. Many around the world had looked to the Zionist Congress as a major event in the war against the Third Reich, only to now witness a spectacle of recriminations.
³³
Zionist priorities became self-evident. And only Germany took pleasure in the display, since the war against Revisionism was for all intents and purposes a surrogate war against the anti-Nazi boycott.

To balance the public perceptions of the Congress as a convention of squabbles devoid of concrete action, Mapai decided to present openly its proposals to help German Jewry. Mapai's plan was a synthesis of noble long-range hopes and immediate short-term realities attainable through the still secret Transfer Agreement. It called for the salvation of approximately 250,000
German Jews over the next ten years. This figure represented about half the Jews still in Germany. The presumption was that half of German Jewry had already lost all means of economic survival with no hope of regaining a livelihood.

The plan worked this way: Approximately a thousand Jewish families could be settled in Palestine at once. The rest of the quarter million would quickly emigrate to other countries, especially the United States, which for years had enjoyed a virtually unused German immigration quota. As more land was purchased and developed in Palestine, a percentage of the Jews who had emigrated to other countries would emigrate again, this time to their final destination, Eretz Yisrael. This long-term, two-stage emigration to Palestine would take place over the next decade and ultimately account for between
60,000
and
I00,000
of the quarter million emigrants envisioned.
The remainder—6o to 75 percent—would assimilate into the first-stage receiver nations.
³⁴

Mapai's plan, formulated by Dr. Arthur Ruppin with the Transfer Agreement in mind, was a sudden open admission that Palestine simply could not solve the entire German Jewish crisis. The most it could do was absorb a thousand families at once, and unspecified thousands more over a period of years.
Of
course, the unmentioned aspect of the Mapai program was that Ruppin's plan would actively help only those German Jews willing to commit themselves to Palestine as a
final destination
.
³⁵

While dressed up with huge numbers, Mapai's plan was seen by many as little more than an amorphous rescue notion. It added almost nothing to the thousand emergency immigration certificates granted by the British government that spring. And the Mapai plan was not particularly fulfilling in a Zionist sense because the protracted two-stage immigration scheme could be expected to fail as European-cultured German Jews simply restarted their lives in first-stage countries and forgot about any commitment to Palestine five or ten years later. However, Ruppin knew that all German Jewish emi
grant deposits in the proposed Liquidation Bank were to be reimbursed only at the moment of ultimate arrival in Palestine.
If
out of a quarter million German Jews, only
I,000
families arrived in Palestine immediately to collect reimbursements, and no more than
50,000
to
I00,000
came to collect over
the span of a decade, the transfer would carry immeasurable added significance to Palestinian development. Ruppin's plan meant that few transferred assets would
be
repaid, and what was repaid would be stretched over many years.

The Revisionists immediately rejected Mapai's concept as too little for too few over too long a period of time. Revisionists instead called for all-out political and economic isolation of the Hitler regime until either it rescinded its anti-Semitic terror—which was unlikely—or Jews were allowed to depart for Palestine with all of their belongings and possessions so they could properly rebuild their lives.
³⁶
The Revisionist plan was militant and defensive, yet Palestine-oriented. In fact, it was simply the common man's plan spoken of throughout the world by Zionist and non-Zionist, Jew and non-Jew: combatting Hitlerism with all political and economic weapons while at the same time bringing the persecuted Jews to Palestine.

On Friday, August
I
8,
when the Actions Committee met to reconsider the presidium question, the rival parties were again deadlocked, primarily because Mizrachi continued to support the Revisionists' right to participate in the movement. But before the Friday session was over, Mapai forces had succeeded in creating the special Commission on Palestinian Terrorism. The new commission was designed to indict the Revisionist party wholesale for Arlosoroff's murder and sentence the party's hundred thousand worldwide members to an ultimatum: renunciation of Revisionism or permanent expulsion from the Zionist movement.
³⁷
Dusk brought the sabbath and prevented further debate on the presidium.

But during the Sunday session, August
20
,
the presidium question was again fiercely contested. The Revisionist role had by then become underscored. Late that day the Actions Committee learned of the American Jewish Congress decision to formally join Untermyer's boycott movement. A cable sent by Untermyer to Louis Lipsky, American leader of the General Zionist party, specifically called upon officials to read a "boycott manifesto" to the Prague delegates and urge a resolution joining the economic war.
³⁸

The "boycott manifesto" received by Lipsky was specifically phrased to appeal to the General Zionist delegates because they had the potential of teaming up with the Revisionists, the Mizrachi, and the Radical Zionists to defeat Mapai's staunch anti-boycott policy. The manifesto contained profuse praise for General Zionist chief Chaim Weizmann as "the greatest statesmanly Jewish leader of our generation, and eloquent reminders that "the present Congress is amongst the most important in Palestine's history." Untermyer's manifesto assured that "Germany is being kept uninformed about world opinion. Boycott is the only language they understand. Only an economic collapse will open the eyes of the German people." Most importantly, Untermyer stressed that boycott and Palestine-oriented rescue were not mutually exclusive: "The boycott logically goes hand in hand with the movement that I heartily support: to settle in Palestine as many Jews as the limited possibilities and the territory of the land can absorb."
³⁹

Untermyer ended with a reminder:
"If
world Jewry and the civilized world will in the meanwhile not stop, and [instead] tolerate Germany's medieval crusade, then global anti-Semitism will be encouraged, ... then your only chance of helping your persecuted brothers will be lost.
⁴⁰
Whether this manifesto, which essentially advocated the Revisionist strategy, would be read aloud to the Congress delegates and its message then voted on was a decision for the presidium.

The Sunday Actions Committee lasted well past midnight. Mapai would not agree to seat any Revisionists. The Revisionists used their minority power to block the formation of any presidium without them. Finally, the deadlocked session simply broke up. The argument-weary Actions Committee members returned to their hotel rooms to catch a few hours of sleep before the Congress officially opened Monday evening—for the first time in its history, without a presidium.
⁴¹
As the leaders of the Zionist movement fell asleep, just before dawn Monday, no one could predict what would happen.

S
EVEN
HILLS
inhabited by Gothic cathedrals, Romanesque monuments, and regal halls have made Prague "the city of a hundred spires." A
network of bridges spanning the Vltana River link the city's left and right banks. On the left, the medieval Hradcany Castle, towering above a vast complex of gardens, parks, and gray-brown churches. On the right, the congested "old city," with its narrow streets, clock towers, and art galleries.

Jews had always represented a major cultural and economic segment of Bohemia. Prague's Althneuschul, the oldest existing synagogue in Europe, was completed in
1270
.
The synagogue's narrow interior, graced by ribvaulted ceilings and high windows, boasted a large, ornate banner of friendship bestowed in
1648
by the German monarch Frederick III. A Jewish Town Hall was erected in Prague's Jewish district during the sixteenth century; a large clock featuring Hebrew numerals was added in
1754.
Split between Czech and German identities, the Prague Jewish community was known for its illustrious rabbis, scholars, and artists.
¹