Summary
The 1933 agreement between Nazi Germany and the Zionist movement, formalised through the Anglo-Palestine Bank, under which German Jews transferred wealth to Palestine in the form of German export goods. In Lenni Brenner’s account it broke the Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott, channelled some 60 per cent of all capital invested in Palestine between August 1933 and September 1939, and was defended by the World Zionist Organization leadership against the opposition of the great majority of Jews (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, PDF p.50).
Details
- It grew from Sam Cohen’s independent May 1933 agreement with the Nazis for one million Reichmarks ($400,000) of Jewish wealth to be shipped to Palestine as farm machinery, extended under Chaim Arlosoroff’s negotiations for the Jewish Agency (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, PDF p.48-49).
- The Nazis announced the pact during the August 1933 Prague Congress, the day before a boycott resolution was to be debated; when its truth became clear, “pandemonium broke loose”, and the WZO leadership denied responsibility, pretending the agreement bound only Germany and its own Anglo-Palestine Bank (PDF p.49-50).
- Its mechanics: German Jews deposited money in a bank inside Germany, which bought exports sold outside Germany, usually in Palestine; emigres received payment in Palestine after the goods were sold. By 1938 the average user lost at least 30, and even 50, per cent of his money, still three, and eventually five, times better than losses on money sent to any other destination (PDF p.50).
- The limit was 50,000 marks (40,419,000 in total reached Palestine through it, against 60 million to the United Kingdom; 16,529 ‘capitalists’ bringing over £1,000 were admitted over the British immigrant quota, generating a boom in Palestine (PDF p.50-51).
- The WZO at first argued the transfers did not break the boycott because Germany received no foreign currency; Berlin then demanded part payment in foreign currency, the WZO solicited customers for Germany in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, exported oranges to Belgium and Holland on Nazi ships, and by 1936 sold German goods in Britain through the London INTRIA bank created in March 1936 (PDF p.51, p.57).
- Its Middle East selling subsidiary, NEMICO, was sacrificed at the 1935 Lucerne Congress only after the Egyptian Zionist Federation threatened to expose it; the Congress formally endorsed the agreement, and Stephen Wise and Abba Hillel Silver, who had denounced it in 1933, capitulated and endorsed it too (PDF p.52, p.55-56).
- Brenner’s preliminary appraisal: the Nazis were the prime gainers; no defender of the agreement in the 1930s claimed it saved lives, only wealth; it demoralised boycotters, spread the illusion of a modus vivendi with Hitler, and removed the million-strong Zionist movement from the front line of anti-Nazi resistance (PDF p.58-59).
Related pages
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, World Zionist Organization, Chaim Arlosoroff, Sam Cohen, Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott, Chaim Weizmann