Summary
Labour Zionist Political Secretary of the Jewish Agency, who in Lenni Brenner’s account superseded Sam Cohen in the 1933 negotiations with Nazi Germany, proposed a full-scale liquidation scheme for German Jewish property in alliance with Germany, Italy and the British Empire, and was assassinated on 16 June 1933, two nights after returning to Tel Aviv from Berlin (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, PDF p.48-49).
Details
- In 1932 Arlosoroff had concluded that Zionism had failed to attract enough immigrants to overcome the Arabs’ numbers and was not drawing enough Jewish capital; Hitler in power meant war within ten years, so survival in Palestine required swift, vigorous action (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, PDF p.48).
- He explained in the Juedische Rundschau and elsewhere that extending Cohen’s transfer project could only be done in complete co-operation with Berlin, and proposed a company with the participation of the German State and other European, primarily British and Italian, interests to slowly liquidate German Jewish properties through letters of credit and a guarantee fund, with a British-chosen manager because German Jews would not put all their money in Hitler’s hands (PDF p.48-49).
- In early May 1933 he and the Nazis reached a preliminary understanding to extend Cohen’s arrangements; he visited Berlin again in June, returned to Tel Aviv on 14 June, and was assassinated two nights later; the killing did not slow the WZO’s accommodation, and the resulting Ha’avara (Transfer Agreement) pact was announced in time for the August 1933 Prague Congress (PDF p.49).
- At Prague, several of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Revisionists stood arrested for Arlosoroff’s murder while the Congress met, which most delegates took as proof of their complicity and which destroyed the hearing for Jabotinsky’s boycott resolution (PDF p.49-50).
- Arlosoroff was succeeded as Political Secretary by Moshe Shertok (Moshe Sharett), who defended the Ha’avara (Transfer Agreement) policy at the 1935 Lucerne Congress (PDF p.54-55).
Related pages
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, Ha’avara (Transfer Agreement), Jewish Agency, Sam Cohen, Moshe Sharett