The Transfer Agreement (68 page)

Ben-Gurion's demand provoked criticism from the other parties, who understood that Mapai's control would now allow it to usurp the entire immigration certificate system. But while the Mizrachi, General Zionists, and Radical Zionists were busy responding to Mapai's immigration position, Revisionist delegates were thinking about the Transfer Agreement. Although they had walked out en masse the night before when their boycott resolution was denied a vote, they had decided to remain for subsequent sessions. The Transfer Agreement, still shrouded in ambiguity, had raised a storm of protest around the world.
If
the agreement was what the Revisionists suspected, the details had to be aired before the delegates, the world media, and world Jewry.

The presidium could block almost any attempt to debate the transfer issue. But one of the Revisionists believed he could circumvent the presidium by invoking the right of
interpellation.
The parliamentary procedure of interpellation guaranteed delegates the right to introduce a special question for clarification. In the middle of the Friday session, Meir Grossman stood up and announced; "The Democratic Revisionist faction poses the following question .... In yesterday's newspapers there was a report that an agreement has been concluded between Zionists and the German government ... that Palestine will purchase 3 million marks' worth of goods from Germany and that in return the German government will release a like amount of the property of the Jews."
¹²

Grossman's unexpected comments captured the attention of the delegates. m
ovement from a world Jewry bent on boycotting Hitler. "We consider this agreement to be an outrage and not compatible with the Jewish people's moral and material interest," declared Grossman. "We are asking the Executive whether this agreement was concluded with the Executive's encouragement or knowledge and whether agencies or offices of the Zionist Organization are participating in these negotiations.
¹³

"'We consider clearing up this matter to be urgent and important, particularly since yesterday the majority of the Congress refused a general debate about the events in Germany and has thereby made a detailed investigation of these events impossible. We expect the Executive will reply to this inquiry quickly and thereby give the Congress an opportunity for discussion. My faction has raised this subject because it is one more proof of the need for vigilance. We are beset by dangers and certain people are not as reliable as we had thought." At that, Grossman received an outburst of applause from the delegates.
¹⁴

Up to that point, the Zionist leaders involved in the Transfer Agreement had been able to avoid the question of their involvement. Ruppin had identified Mr. Sam Cohen as the negotiator of the deal.
If
in fact the Transfer Agreement had been negotiated by and was to be implemented under the Zionist Organization or its components, the Congress plenum would have the right to discuss and ratify the question.

Grossman was waiting for his answer. The curious and by now apprehensive delegates of all the parties were waiting. What was the Transfer Agreement and who was responsible for it?

The presidium conferred briefly, and Grossman received his answer: Due to the approaching sunset, the Congress would adjourn for Sabbath. Motzkin gaveled and the session was over.
¹⁵

Before the delegates and reporters dispersed, however, Jabotinsky called an impromptu press conference outside the hall. Over one hundred journalists and scores of delegates gathered around as the fiery orator delivered the full anti-Nazi speech he had been prevented from presenting the day before. He tore into both the Congress' refusal to join the boycott and the Transfer Agreement. "We sympathize with the position of our German brethren. Let them remain loyal to Germany. But Hitlerism is a danger to the sixteen million Jews all over the world, and ... the German Jews cannot influence us not to fight our enemy. Our enemy must be destroyed!"
¹⁶

Jabotinsky then declared that because the Zionist Organization had refused to establish the international network needed for the boycott, the
100,000
members of the Revisionists, all their offices and resources all over the world would do so. There would be no haggling over leadership with such people as Samuel Untermyer. The Revisionists would cooperate fully with all existing boycott groups. As for the Transfer Agreement, Jabotinsky flatly denounced it as humiliating. He vowed that the Jews in Palestine via the agreement, and that the agreement and those connected with it were doomed. Jabotinsky called for the Jews of the world to unite, abandon the Zionist Organization, and take up their rightful place in the economic trenches confronting Hitler.
¹⁷

The Saturday-night session, just after Sabbath, was reserved for general debate. Mapai and their allies wanted to suppress any discussion of the Transfer Agreement and instead continue the verbal war against Revisionism. But before the chair could designate the first speaker, Meir Grossman again invoked his privilege of interpellation. "Yesterday we addressed an urgent interpellation to the Executive and asked for a reply," Grossman stated. "In the meantime, the English press had published reports about an agreement between Germany and Zionists--a matter which the English cannot understand [referring to Germany's trade advantage]. We request that the Executive ... reply today to our urgent inquiry."
¹⁸

Presidium chairman Motzkin answered, "In the bylaws about interpellations, there is nothing that says when an interpellation is
urgent."
¹⁹

Grossman shot back, "I propose that the Congress determine the urgency of our interpellation and instruct the Executive to provide a reply sometime tomorrow."
²⁰

At this point Berl Locker spoke up. Locker was the Executive member who had worked with Sam Cohen on his initial deal in May. Locker stated, "The interpellation referred to by Mr. Grossman has no connection with any action or negotiation conducted by the Executive or ordered by it. In view of today being the Sabbath, the Executive has had no opportunity to conduct a meeting. But it will deal with the interpellation at its next session and will inform the Congress whether it will submit its findings in this matter to the Congress or to a committee."
²¹

Before Grossman could respond, Motzkin said, "We acknowledge this statement by the Executive. I only wish to say that it is entirely up to the Executive whether it gives or does not give an answer. We will now proceed with the general debate."
²²

Locker had forestalled an unpredictable delegate reaction first by lying about the Executive's involvement, and then by appearing to be reasonable by offering to investigate and then report either to the Congress
or
to a committee. The
or
was carefully added so the Executive could simply make that report to a "committee" and yet live up to the promise uttered before the entire plenum.

To turn the Congress away from the transfer and back to Mapai's preferred enemy, Palestinian Labor leader Zalman Rubaschov-who would later become Israeli president Zalman Shalazar-then launched an acidic attack against the Revisionists, characterizing them as "gangrene" that had to be cut away at the proper time. Jabotinsky, upon hearing Rubaschov's words, de-emphatically urged his fellow Laborites to remove the "pernicious, obnoxious elements in our midst."
²³

Joseph Schechtman, a Jabotinsky associate, rose to voice a Revisionist rebuttal. However, before his first sentences were complete, the entire Mapai delegation stood up and walked out. Even as they were exiting, Schechtman denounced their "milk and water resolution on the German situation" and the Congress' refusal to join the boycott as "capitulation to the forces of Hitlerist Germany."
²⁴

When the session finally resumed, Revisionists were anxious to demand more details of the Transfer Agreement. But the proceeding was interrupted by what many believed was a staged emergency. Someone dramatically handed Motzkin a telegram: Motzkin reacted with a look of shock. The presidium then passed the telegram around, conspicuously whispered among themselves, and announced that the session would be adjourned at once.
²⁵

The presidium made no formal announcement, but word quickly spread that the cable had come from Palestine. It claimed that one of the Revisionists on trial for the murder of Arlosoroff had "confessed to the crime." Mapai could now rally the Congress in a moment of passion to expel the entire Revisionist party. The Laborites were ecstatic. The Revisionists reacted to the news with confusion and fear.
²⁶

Both camps were milling about in the lobby when Jabotinsky reentered from his previous walkout. Supporters nervously explained news of the cable from Palestine. Jabotinsky immediately broke into laughter. He summoned all his followers to a caucus and urged them not to despair. "I guarantee that the telegram is a fake .... It is late, and I advise you to get some sleep. And when you wake in the morning, you will find out that the telegram was a fake."
²⁷

The next day, the Congress delegates quickly learned the "confession cable" was in fact a fake.
²⁸
StilI, the false alarm had served to foreclose debate one more day on the truly pressing issue: the Transfer Agreement. But that issue would soon become irresistible. The Nazis were waging a propaganda war, and they had more news to release.

R
EICH
OFFICIALS
reacted nervously to Jabotinsky's break with the Zionist Organization. His August
25
announcement that Revisionism would use its international facilities to coordinate the boycott prompted Nazi leadersto suspect that Jabotinsky was Zionism's other hand, working for the demise of Germany's economy. Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's personal theorist on Jewish and Zionist affairs, printed a stinging editorial in the August
26
Volkischer Beobachter.
Rosenberg labeled the watered-down majority resolution on the German situation as "shocking interference in the internal political affairs of Germany." Because the Congress "was not courageous enough to expel the Jabotinsky-Ied group," Rosenberg concluded that "Jewry is instigating a new campaign against Germany." He warned that the texts of Congress resolutions would be rigorously examined to determine exactly what Zionism's policy would be.
¹

Jabotinsky tried not to disappoint the worried Nazis. His followers openly organized boycott meetings with visiting businessmen in Prague. One idea was to make sure that importers switching to non-German suppliers had no difficulty establishing new credit.
²
The logic was inescapable.
If
a Jewish-sponsored global finance network could
promote
German exports, a Jewish-sponsored global network could
undermine
German exports.

Jabotinsky also announced that he had sent a cable to Samuel Untermyer:
"SHOULD LIKE TO COORDINATE REVISIONIST BOYCOTT ACTIVITY WITH YOUR FEDERATION STOP PLEASE INSTRUCT YOUR PARIS REPRESENTATIVE."
Elias Ginsburg, a key Jabotinsky organizer in America, was already one of Untermyer's main boycott activists. To underscore his willingness to support Untermyer, Jabotinsky assured Ginsburg,
"I
need not add what decisive importance we attach to Mr. Untermyer's personality and to the Federation headed by him. It is our fervent wish to coordinate all our activity with this powerful factor."
³

Outside Prague, where Jews were beginning to feel a deep sense of betrayal, there was open talk of renouncing the Zionist Organization altogether if the price of allegiance required abandonment of the holy war against Hitler. One of the most outspoken was, of course, Untermyer. During an August 27 Youngstown, Ohio, address to B'nai B'rith lodges from three states-broadcast nationally by CBS radio--Untermyer appealed to the B'nai B'rith rank and file to break with their national leaders and fall in behind the boycott crusade. "Your representatives in the East ... made a grave mistake in aligning you with the American Jewish Committee in opposing the ... boycott, which is the only weapon available ... [against Hitler's] barbarous campaign of extermination. You are thereby unwittingly denying to your stricken brethren in Germany ... [their] only hope of effective relief."
⁴

He explained, "These gentlemen [the Committee] are a self-appointed, self-perpetuating body who represent no constituents other than themselves. Unlike your organization, they have no specific mandate from any section of the Jewish people and therefore are accountable to no one for their self-appointed task." B'nai B'rith members needed to understand how they had been misused, Untermyer said. The Congress had "seen the error of its ways, and has had the courage to break away" and join the boycott movement.Would not B'nai B'rith do the same?
⁵

Turning to the Zionist Organization and the Transfer Agreement, Unter-
myer's
threats were equally unbuffered. "The Zionist Organization had no business to enter upon any such negotiations." And he warned, "If they accede to any such terms, or to any terms other than to offer to take care of the very limited number of German Jews whom they can locate in Palestine or care for ... [then] they will rightly destroy their organization in this country."
⁶

Untermyer, a leading American Zionist and Palestine contributor, knew that the American wing of the Zionist Organization was an indispensable column upon which the entire world movement balanced. American numbers, American contributions, and American political involvement made American Jewry a powerhouse in Zionism. That power could be shut off-or reconnected to another house, especially the house of Revisionism, which wanted to establish a rival worldwide Zionist organization.