The Transfer Agreement (78 page)

"Yes," Stephen Wise answered. "Why do you ask?" The young girl would not respond. Wise repeatedly tried to break her silence, but she would not
speak until just before her stop. She was a German Jewish refugee, without family, now working as a maid in a French village. In Germany, she had lived in a nice house with her family. One night the Nazis came and abducted her brother. The next day he was returned in a coffin marked
"NOT TO BE OPENED—SHOT IN FLlGHT."
²

Wise asked the terrified girl, "Was the coffin opened?" She answered, "Yes, but don't ask me." Yet, in a moment more, the girl relived the discovery that her brother's face had been shot away.
³

The girl's tragic story and the girl herself couldn't help but move Stephen Wise. He bluntly asked whether she thought the Geneva Conference had helped or done damage. The girl looked at him and answered,
"Es muss sein, es muss sein"—
(What
must be, must be.)
⁴
She then left the train, but her last remark haunted Wise. For several weeks, he could not help but recall in his private and public conversations that unclear instant when the innocent young refugee spoke those few words: "What must be, must be."
⁵

On Friday, September
15,
Rabbi Wise arrived in New York. Unlike the return of Samuel Untermyer, there were no welcoming committees, no fanfares, no national radio broadcasts. After resting on the Sabbath, Wise called a small press conference in his study at the Free Synagogue.
⁶

In a dramatic session marked by Wise's barely controllable emotional outbursts, Wise tried to explain his activities abroad to reporters. He emphasized that the situation for Jews in Germany was graver than anyone could imagine. Only international pressure, hopefully by the League of Nations, coupled with the anti-Nazi boycott could "bring about the end of the Hitler regime." But, he added, the world must also be prepared to organize an emigration out of Germany. One reporter asked why Wise had wavered so long on the boycott question, and whether the Geneva resolution was not merely a repetition of the boycott voted some months earlier by Untermyer's World Jewish Economic Federation in Amsterdam.
⁷

Wise replied emotionally and defensively, "You ask ... what has led me to change my mind? I have from the beginning believed that the boycott was a natural, inevitable weapon in the hands of individual Jews against Hitlerism . . . . My position from the beginning has been that a world Jewish boycott could only be declared against Germany by a world body of Jews. I have never changed my position with regard to that.
If
boycott there was to be, I insisted all the time that representatives of the world must assemble and declare such a boycott. This was finally done under the auspices of the World Jewish Conference ... and it was I who introduced and urged its unanimous adoption."
⁸

Unable to restrain his bitterness about Untermyer's triumph, Wise added, "I do not know anything about the World Economic Federation, if there is such a body. I believe there was a conference of one dozen or fifteen people in Amsterdam, which called itself the World Jewish Economic Federation. I
refuse to discuss anything that may have been said or done by the so-called World Jewish Economic Federation, or its head [Samuel Untermyer]. My battle is against Hitlerism. We Jews are engaged in a war of self-defense which will tax every atom of energy of Jews everywhere. There may be Jews who are so little concerned about the peril to world Jewry as to be prepared to engage in the divertissement of Jewish quarrel and strife. I refuse to be diverted. One war at a time.
⁹

"For the same reason, I refuse to permit any celebration of my homecoming by the American Jewish Congress." This referred to the fanfare for Untermyer upon his return from Amsterdam. "There is no occasion, as far as I can see, for celebrations or banquets or thanksgivings, nor will there be any in Jewish life until after the Hitler regime shall have ended."
¹⁰

Wise castigated America as being alone in refusing any sizable number of refugees. He praised "countries like England, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, and Austria in extending their hospitality to refugee Jews. Up to this time, the only great country which has failed to offer such hospitality is our own."
¹¹

However, there was hope, Wise explained, because Palestine would be able to absorb
50,000
to
100,000
German Jews within the next decade.
"Such a possibility is rendered likelier because for reasons ... difficult to understand, Germany permits Jews to leave the country for Palestine and to take ...
£1000
of their possessions, which is not true in the case of refugees fleeing to other lands." This comment raised the issue of pacts between Germany and Zionist bodies, including the Transfer Agreement.
¹²

Wise answered that there was still great confusion over whether the Transfer Agreement actually existed, although he was unalterably opposed to an arrangement allowing emigration with assets via a merchandise sale. "I, for my part, felt and feel that of all places on earth, Palestine must be above suspicion, and that nothing could be worse than that the Jewish boycott against Germany should be breached by Palestine or those wishing to go to Palestine."
¹³
Wise was angry. He wanted to fight. Yet he knew whatever fight ensued could not be victorious.

For several more minutes, Wise rambled between different postures on the boycott, what the Geneva conference had actually accomplished, and whether the boycott would or would not be successful. At the end he suddenly broke into a telling of the incident on the train, recounting how he had met a young refugee girl whose brother's face had been shot away. "This is a sample of the horrors to which my people are being subjected in Germany!" he cried.
¹⁴

The press conference that morning was less a presentation of fact than an unwitting statement of confusion about what organized Jewry had done and was intending to do about the Hitler question. Few reporters published any mention of Dr. Wise's statements.

One week later, on September
23,
at
9:00 P.M.,
Dr. Wise went to the offices of the American Jewish Congress to explain his activities in Europe to several dozen members of the Congress' Administrative Committee. They wanted answers about whatever had happened to the
organized
boycott, why it was necessary to sabotage Untermyer's work, and what were the facts about the Transfer Agreement. This time Wise's audience was composed of people who knew many of the ins and outs of protest politics over the summer, people with the power to turn the Congress away from Wise at this moment of accountability.

After a few words of introduction, Wise began speaking: "I think the best thing to do would be to give a chronological story, a story which will be more or less chronological in its character. My work already began on the steamer going to Europe." Wise stopped.
"If
I
am to speak frankly tonight, it must be with the understanding that you [Bernard Deutsch], as chairman, will guarantee that nothing I say will be reported in the press. I cannot begin to talk of the things which I am going to say ... unless, ladies and gentlemen, I have the feeling that nothing will be repeated." Having received the assurance he needed, Wise proceeded.
¹⁵

He tried to make them understand what immeasurable good he had contributed to the worldwide protest movement. "There was no action, there was no
thought
of action in Europe until ... Deutsch and I ... sent those cables to Poland, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia [calling for a worldwide day of protest focusing on the March 27 Madison Square Garden rally]. The whole great European protest movement was undertaken as a result of our inspiration and suggestion ....
It
was not until the twenty-third or twenty-fourth of March that the agitation throughout Europe and Palestine began, not one day sooner .... Up to our last day in Europe, I never met anyone ... who did not feel that things would have been infinitely worse in Germany if it had not been for the agitation led by America—infinitely worse."
¹⁶

A moment later, Wise found himself again talking about the girl on the train. "I asked that girl if she thought we had helped or done damage," related Wise. "Her answer was
'Es muss sein, es muss sein,'
It
has to
be."
His very next words were, "I want you to know, for your satisfaction, that I hesitated, I faltered just as much as anyone did. I knew the terrible responsibility. But I got the impression, I want you to know it, that our agitation was enormously helpful. All German Jews, whose judgment is worthwhile, think so."
¹⁷

He returned to a chronological account explaining intrigue-filled meetings in London as he bargained with the Board of Deputies to support the Geneva conference. He repeatedly denied responsibility for canceling Untermyer's London boycott gathering, but admitted he opposed it because the World Economic Conference was convening in London at the same time. Wise recounted the serpentine development at the Eighteenth Zionist Con
gress, its failure even to vote on the Revisionist boycott resolution, and the confusion over the Transfer Agreement. "Labor [Mapai] must accept the responsibility ... Labor had a virtual majority; Labor controlled the Congress; Labor said absolutely nothing must be said about the boycott." Wise then told of his repeated but unavailing efforts to force revocation of the Transfer Agreement and indeed all relations between Zionist bodies and the Third Reich.
¹⁸

Rabbi Wise tried to cast the best light possible upon the Second World Jewish Conference held in Geneva. Although he extolled its show of unity, he was in the end forced to confront the fact that the boycott had not been organized, that Geneva had failed in its prime mission. The boycott, asserted Wise, "is a weapon, but it is not
the
weapon .... The president of the United States and the prime minister of England can do more than a hundred boycotts."
¹⁹

Wise spoke for some time to the Administrative Committee, alone and without interruption, offering sharp analysis, defensive explanations, rambling insights, emotional observations, and desperate denials. He had tried to explain his motives, his achievements, his contributions, his failures, his disappointments. To both critics and supporters alike, Wise summed up his efforts with these emotional words: "I gave my best, I gave the uttermost of my devotion, and such strength as I have, to the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Conference. In return, I think I have the right to ask for the loyal, faithful cooperation of the members of the Administrative Committee in the days that are coming. I would like to feel that, whether the members ... always agree with me or not—after all, I am not an arbiter, I am not a tyrant, I do not try to impose my will upon this body—I may have made a mistake in the boycott, I don't believe I did."
²⁰

The very first to speak after Wise's apologia was Mrs. Goldie Myerson, an Administrative Committee member and prominent Mapai leader in America. She declared Wise could not expect Mapai people to sit by quietly in the face of his remarks about the Zionist Congress. Others tried to steer the conversation to pragmatic questions of cooperation with Untermyer's movement and whether Wise's report was acceptable. Mrs. Myerson interrupted and demanded that some of Dr. Wise's comments about Mapai be stricken from the record.
²¹
Mrs. Goldie Myerson was later to change her name to Golda Meir and become one of Israel's most memorable prime ministers.

Mrs. Myerson's objections were finally overruled, and the ensuing debate revolved around whether Stephen Wise had properly explained himself. In one inadvertent but telling remark, Bernard Deutsch, Wise's most loyal associate, declared that Dr. Wise had satisfactorily answered what he had "been charged with" doing in Europe. Stephen Wise immediately stood to reject this unintentionally accusatory language. Wise denied that the vituperations of his critics, such as Untermyer, were valid charges, and he asked that Deutsch's comments be expunged from the record.
²²

Then Joseph Tenenbaum, a leading boycott advocate, rose to second a motion of confidence, adding these comments: "Dr. Wise was the first to raise the question of a boycott, but a silent boycott. It is not due to him that the silent boycott on our part was not put into action .... Dr. Wise was not opposed to the [boycott] resolution, only postponement. We got his ... [pro-boycott] opinion in Prague when it was announced throughout the world . . . . I therefore rise not only to endorse the action of Dr. Wise, but to assure him that our loyalty is steadfast ... and that we are happy to greet him here and to thank him for his noble work in Europe as well as here."
²³

Those dissatisfied with Wise's statement, especially Mr. Zelig Tygel, who had become an Untermyer organizer, pressed for a debate with an eye toward forcing Wise to cooperate with Untermyer.
²⁴
But Wise's supporters outnumbered the critics. His supporters could not abandon the man who had devoted his entire life's energies to the defense and advancement of the Jewish community. And they could not abandon him because Stephen Wise
was
the Congress. Yes, there were hundreds of thousands of federated members, with branch offices and constituent organizations in dozens of cities; there were committees and commissions and special panels and an array of vice-presidents and functioning and titular officials. But all that notwithstanding, Stephen Wise
was
the Congress. And they could not and would not abandon him.