The Transfer Agreement (82 page)

I remember a scene in the film
Ship of Fools
. The boat is sailing back to the Reich. German Jews are seated around the captain's table. One of the Jews cannot believe the dire consequences awaiting them. “What are they going to do,” he asks incredulously, “Kill a million Jews?” Many European Jews went to their death precisely because they couldn't imagine that such atrocities could occur.

Nor could anyone. Zionists negotiating the Transfer Agreement did not anticipate the concentration camps and gas chambers. No civilized person could. But those in Zionist leadership did understand one precept: It can always get worse. They understood that even their darkest nightmares could somehow become blacker in ways they could not predict—and indeed no one since has ever been able to explain. For this reason, statebuilding was the Zionist priority. Transfer was their mechanism. German goods were the hateful modality. As a result, lives were saved, property transferred, and an indispensable column of the human, economic, and physical infrastructure of the future state of Israel was erected.

Motivated by the desire to save both the threatened community and future communities, the Zionists had to coldly assume the distasteful, gunto-temple responsibilities of standing up to the Devil in his own lair and negotiating a way out. That way was the Transfer Agreement.

Certainly, we have learned from the
Haavara
. Its legacy has been replayed in the rescue of Soviet, Ethiopian, Syrian, Iranian, and Yemenite Jewry. The mechanisms and methods have differed, but have always abided by the same imperative. At some point, when the effort for relief and defense yields to the rush to rescue, negotiations are needed. A mechanism is needed. It will be created.

The enemies of the Jewish people and the Jewish nation will always claim that Zionist undertook the Transfer just to promote emigration. Just to build their state. That's the easy cop-out for people who don't see red when Jewish blood spills. But we do. The people who were there know better. And thanks to Edwin Black's
The Transfer Agreement
, future generations can also know what the victims of that day ultimately and painfully understood.

Abraham H. Foxman is national director of the Anti-Defamation League. This After-word was originally written for the 2001 edition.