The Transfer Agreement (74 page)

The next resolution of importance addressed the question of Dr. Weizmann. For days, Mapai had been trying to convince him to return to the presidency of the Zionist Organization. Weizmann had rebuffed all pleas because Mapai had failed to expel the Revisionists. Finally, Weizmann sent word—without actually visiting the Congress hall—that he would not accept the presidency, but would chair a new London-based entity to be known as the Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews. The Bureau would coordinate all relief, emigration, and political issues affecting German Jewry, including Haavara. In Palestine, a sister entity called the German Department would be headed by Dr. Ruppin.
²⁸

In essence, Weizmann no longer needed the helm of the Zionist Organization to guide the destiny of the Jewish national effort. That destiny now reposed within the borders of the Third Reich, and within the numbered accounts of the Liquidation Bank, Paltreu, and Haavara. Since Weizmann's bureau would operate semi-autonomously in tandem with the Zionist Executive, Weizmann and Mapai could make their own decisions without factional obstruction. In Weizmann's view, the Zionist Organization, with all its parties and points of view and cumbersome committees, was too inefficient for the task at hand. A state was to be built while flames were all around.

The resolution creating the new bureau was passed.
²⁹
Most of the delegates voting had no way of knowing they were creating an elite entity that during the next fifteen years would make virtually all the life-or-death rescue decisions for German Jewry.

As had been proven on the back of the Revisionists, it did not pay to oppose Mapai. But on the resolution regarding the Transfer Agreement, the Revisionists were hoping the delegates would rise up and vote their consciences. The press, the letters and telegrams, the phone calls, the late-night clashes, the quiet, introspective personal moments of regret that most delegates had felt would almost certainly compel them to vote to rescind. On the other hand, Mapai looked upon the Transfer Agreement as the cornerstone of everything to come: the buyer of land, the builder of schools, the sponsor of halutzim, the redeemer of the Jewish future. Weizmann's bureau, the priority for halutzim, the unrivaled domination of Mapai—all of it was contingent on the next vote.

Mapai had already been busy making private assurances to delegates about the meaning of their resolution: Yes, there were major problems with the agreement and its conflict with the boycott. Those who had engineered the agreement had even expressed a willingness to scrap it, but a humiliating floor rejection was not the way. At the very next meeting of the Actions Committee, the entire program would either be brought into harmony with the boycott or be rescinded as the public wanted. These were the impressions held by a great number of delegates, including some of the most influential, such as American delegation co-leader Louis Lipsky, a close associate of Weizmann, who had just been appointed to the Zionist Executive.
³⁰

Political Committee chairman Michael Ringel read the majority resolution paragraph requiring the "Congress to tum over the question of the interpellation of August
24
to the Actions Committee with the instruction that nothing shall be done ... contrary to the attitude of the Congress on the German Jewish question."
³¹

Then it was Meir Grossman's turn: "I am proposing the following minority resolution: As long as the Jews in Germany have not received their former legal rights again, and as long as the German government does not ... enable Jews the right of free emigration taking all their property, the Zionist Congress considers
it inadmissable that the Executive of the Zionist Organization or its subordinate institutions sign any agreement of any kind with the present German government.' "
³²

Grossman turned to his fellow Jews and told them, "In full conscience of the responsibility and in the interest of the German Jews and not less in the interest of all of world Jewry, we have to be fully aware that we are not allowed in any way to weaken the atmosphere of protest in the Jewish world today. We were told that the Executive had no relations whatsoever to this action. But I rather declare that at least three members of the Zionist Executive knew about this 'action.' Therefore we [the movement] have given this 'action' our national signature and seal, and I consider it a breach of
national discipline
³³

Grossman had turned Mapai's own weapon against them. The Transfer Agreement, maintained Grossman, was the ultimate breach of discipline. His closing words: "It is impossible to leave this Congress without condemning this 'action.' Neither the Executive nor one of the institutions under its guidance has the right to sign an agreement with a government engaged with us in a daily struggle. Our resolution must liberate the Zionist Organization from the damage which has been done to it by this agreement!"
³⁴

Berl Katznelson, on behalf of Mapai rose to answer: ''After the declaration of Mr. Grossman, I am forced to say the following: In the Political Committee this question ,was discussed ... at great length in a number of sessions ....
It was the express wish of the committee to avoid if possible a Congress debate on the question. In every parliamentary body it is understood that there are sometimes important foreign-policy issues which have to be treated discreetly, and by persons who are thoroughly familiar with the subject."
³⁵

Katznelson then charged Grossman himself with a flagrant breach of discipline. "We have seen today how many people who sit in confidential bodies leak news which we explicitly decided was confidential," rebuked Katznelson. "They do it if the matter can be exploited for party affairs.... The majority of the [Political] Committee clearly understood that it is the main task of Zionism and a Zionist duty to negotiate as Jews and as Zionists and to help the Jews in all countries who are forced to emigrate. They have to be supported to save their life and also their property. Therefore negotiations have to be led, even when it involves negotiations ... with hostile factors. This is the way Zionism has been understood since the days of Herzl.
³⁶

"The idea of a Liquidation Bank is also connected with negotiations and very often with very difficult, bitter circumstances. A short time ago, a decision established [Weizmann's] Central Bureau, which today should be engaged in transferring Jews with their property from Germany to Eretz Yisrael," Katznelson said. "On this resolution, which is also connected with certain negotiations, Grossman voted in favor."
³⁷

Katznelson ended his appeal declaring, "We don't believe that it is possible to draw a financial agreement into a political debate. Any Zionist body must agree that Eretz Yisrael is the primary thing and it is the primary duty to save Jewish lives and Jewish assets from all dangers to which they are exposed."
³⁸

A choice lay before the weary delegates. The final session had begun at 4:00 P.M.
Sunday. It was now close to dawn on Monday. Many were confused about the details of the issue, but many also seemed to sense that it placed Judaism and Zionism at a crossroads. The Transfer Agreement, the liquidation and transfer of German Jewish assets ... yes—this would create the State.

So they voted yes. Yes to allowing Zionist leaders to make the painful, complicated decisions in the privacy of caucus rooms and conference chambers. In so doing, many fully understood that their decision was indeed yes for the Transfer Agreement, yes for the road to nationhood, and yes for a decisive historic move to intervene in the continuum of Jewish dispossession and persecution.
³⁹

In full recognition that Israel was to become a reality, seventy-seven delegates suddenly and solemnly asked that the white banner emblazoned with the light blue Star of David, for decades the symbol of the Zionist movement, be officially designated the national flag. They also moved that
"Hatikva,"
for decades the symbolic hymn of the Zionist movement, be officially designated the national anthem. Both motions were adopted.
⁴⁰
Now
they had a flag, a song, a treasury, and a people. Land was the only element they were missing. That, too, would come through the power of the Transfer Agreement.

A few closing speeches were made, and at about
9:00 A.M.,
after seventeen hours of debate and soul-searching, the Eighteenth Zionist Congress was adjourned. The delegates walked from the hall singing their national anthem,
"Hatikva."
In Hebrew it means "hope."

T
HE
LAST POLITICAL ACT
of the Eighteenth Zionist Congress was the unison singing of
"Hatikva."
But the aftertaste of this Congress left many in the movement embittered and confused about the facts. Some believed the Transfer Agreement would be sent to the Actions Committee and quietly revoked. Many believed that the Transfer Agreement was officially condoned as a distasteful but necessary act to save German Jews and their assets for the Jewish national home-but purely commercial agreements such as the orange deal were explicitly forbidden. Others remained under the impression that the agreement was merely a contract between Sam Cohen, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, and the Third Reich-with absolutely no official Zionist involvement. And there were those who believed that neither the Transfer Agreement nor the orange deal actually existed.
¹

For instance, shortly after the Congress, the London
Jewish Chronicle
commented on the two agreements. On the orange deal, the
Chronicle
reported,
"It
is now stated definitely that, strictly speaking, no such agreement exists." On the Haavara, the
Chronicle
reported, "It has been brought about mainly by a private commercial concern in Palestine-Hanotaiah. The Jewish Agency has stated, in somewhat cryptic language, that it 'does not participate' in any way in ... the agreement .... Mr. Sam Cohen, who is said to have conducted the negotiations, leaves no doubt as to Zionist cooperation .... We leave it to others to square Mr. Cohen's words with the categorical denials ... recently heard in Prague."
²

Modern View,
St. Louis' Jewish weekly, issued a call to Zionist officials to end the confusion. "A veritable storm of protest from every part of the Jewish world has greeted the report from Berlin [of an orange deal] ....
[It]
may be part of a Nazi scheme to discredit the sincerity of the anti-German boycott, [but] it behooves the Zionist [authorities] to issue a frank denial ... [and] quickly."
³

When a reporter asked Stephen Wise how the agreements could have been approved, he replied, "None of us at the Zionist Congress could be certain of the facts. . . . I fought against it in the Political Committee. I was defeated by two groups; one consisting of those who denied in the most categorical manner that there was any such pact, and the second ... who took the position that ... to not purchase goods from Germany is no more than assenting to partial expropriation [by the Nazis]."
⁴

And Zionist Executive member Louis Lipsky published a front-page statement in
The New Palestine,
official newspaper of the Zionist Organization of America, declaring, "The specific agreement about which there has been so much discussion in the press has been referred to the next" meeting of the Actions Committee. I understand the enterprise is to be abandoned by its initiators."
⁵
When he wrote those words, Lipsky was unaware that the Actions Committee meeting he mentioned was in fact never held. On the day in question, almost no one showed up;
the committee lacked the quorum
needed to convene.
⁶

But continued German leaks, many of which were published un-challenged in Palestinian newspapers, compelled many to believe that the Transfer Agreement
did
in fact exist and in some way involved the Zionist Organization officially. This growing group of angry believers continued to demand that the agreement be revoked and the boycott adhered to. Typical was a comment in
The Jewish Chronicle:
"We cannot overlook the broad and ugly features of the situation .... Half a boycott won't save the German Jews!"
⁷

On September
5, 1933,
delegates from Jewish communities around the world arrived in Geneva. Many had come directly from Prague. Once in Geneva, among fellow boycotters, these delegates underwent a rapid change of attitude. In the. pressure-cooker atmosphere of the Eighteenth Zionist Congress, the word "boycott" was essentially
verboten.
Anyone even uttering it was immediately put on the defensive. Now in Geneva, the exact opposite was true. Anyone who dared rationalize trading with the enemy was a traitor, and all boycott traitors were to be exposed.