Summary
Owner of Ha Note’a Ltd, a Tel Aviv citrus export firm, who in Lenni Brenner’s account made the first overtures to Nazi Germany in 1933 and signed the agreement from which the Ha’avara (Transfer Agreement) grew (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, PDF p.47-48).
Details
- Cohen had proposed under Chancellor Bruning that Zionist emigres avoid Germany’s flight tax on capital by purchasing goods in Germany to be turned back into cash after sale in Palestine; Bruning had no interest, but in 1933 Cohen presented the plan again on his own (PDF p.47).
- The German Consul in Jerusalem, Heinrich Wolff, grasped that the scheme could break the Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott: “It might be possible to make a breach in the wall” (PDF p.47-48).
- In early May 1933 the Nazis signed an agreement with Cohen for one million Reichmarks ($400,000) of Jewish wealth to be shipped to Palestine in the form of farm machinery (PDF p.48).
- At the World Zionist Organization’s intervention, Cohen arranged for Menachem Ussischkin of the Jewish National Fund the release of frozen JNF monies in Germany via Ha Note’a, and assured Wolff he would operate behind the scenes at a forthcoming Jewish conference in London to weaken or defeat any boycott resolution (PDF p.48).
- Cohen was soon superseded in the negotiations by Chaim Arlosoroff of the Jewish Agency; in late 1933 Chaim Weizmann let Cohen propose to the German Foreign Ministry that Weizmann come to Berlin to discuss reviving Arlosoroff’s full liquidation bank, but the Nazis declined to invite him (PDF p.48, p.52).
Related pages
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, Ha’avara (Transfer Agreement), Chaim Arlosoroff, Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott