The holocaust was a terrible event against the Jewish people in Europe and caused many to leave the continent. There was a large zionist movement in Palestine when the persecution of the Jewish people in Germany began. This movement continued to the postwar period and was focused around getting people to move to Palestine. The Jewish community in Palestine seemed to help the Nazi’s plan of moving Jewish people then used what the Nazi’s had done to fulfill the Zionist plan.
Tom Segev’s article “The Streets are Paved with Money” discusses this period before the start of the war when the zionist movement grew. Segev discusses how the Zionist movement leaders would meet with Nazi officials over the movement of Jewish people out of Germany (Segev, 20). There was even in fighting among those part of the zionist movement over who will help pay for the movement of the Jewish people because they needed £1,000 sterling to move to Palestine (Segev, 21). This was the zionist leaders taking their opportunity to bring Jewish people to a common place and getting money from it.
The main problem from this is that not much outrage happens over the discrimination of the Jewish people from the zionists. There was another Jewish movement seeking to punish Germans for the persecution of the Jewish minority on global stage (Segev, 26). This was the opposite idea of the zionist but was the better idea to help the Jewish people. This may have prevented what happened to the Jewish people in Europe and maybe the war. The suggestion that they had was to boycott economically and diplomatically boycott the Germans (Segev, 26). This would have caused huge problems for the Germans who were beginning to recover from the Great Depression. Instead the zionists got their deal with the Germans and the other deal was rejected by the international community. This deal had the beginnings of helping the Jewish community but it took to long to implement and continued the suffering of the Jewish community.
Following the war the zionist continued their plan to move people to Palestine and was heavily supported by Western governments. In “Living in Landsberg, Dreaming of Deganiah” Avinoam Patt discusses the way in which this movement gained its popularity. Patt discusses the way in which the Jewish community wanted to leave and how a plan was implemented by the zionists to achieve this through the Kibbutz project (Patt, 109). This was the idea where a place was created for jewish people to come to and create a farm that would help the area until they had the papers to leave. This even reinforced their want of going to Palestine to create their own state.
Poster telling Jewish people to come build a homeland
The zionist movement was able to take this want and use it to help their plan that they had wanted for so long. They had continued to be the opportunists they were before the war but with more success this time. They were able to do what they had wanted before the war but with more support from the people coming to Palestine. It still took a long time but with the support of a strong West the plan was able to be completed. The poster above shows the way in which the zionists were convincing other to come to Palestine. They were promising a land to build for the whole Jewish race, a land where they would not persecuted which was a suggestion from before the war.
The zionists may have had a problem of not helping the Jewish people in Germany before the war. They could have adopted a policy that would have the people moved and prevented further discrimination against them. In the end the zionists got their wish but after the lose of many Jewish lives were lost.
So in essence you believe that Zionists were opportunists that capitalized on the Holocaust. However, do you think there was any sort of humanitarianism behind the movement. Do you think they believed this to be the best for their community or was it truly political?
It seems like that to me that by the end of World War II the Jewish people had been westernized. Even though the Jews had been spread out across Europe for the last 2,000 years, by the time of 1948 the powers actively helping to create the Jewish state of Israel were all Western, bring along with it implications that they are still dealing with.
I don’t believe the boycott would have made the situation for the Jews in Germany any better. On the contrary, I believe it could have worsened tensions in Europe that could have exacerbated relations between Germany and Jews even more. This could have led to the Holocaust happening much sooner than it did and could have resulted in more deaths had the boycott be successful.
I think it is interesting how you address the contrast between the Zionist movement and the revisionist movement, and the different plans the two groups had to deal with the Nazi threat in Germany. You make it very clear that the Zionist plan was accepted and the boycott was left behind. What makes you think the boycott would have been more successful that the transfer agreement? I find myself sympathizing with the Zionist ideas a little bit, it makes sense to me that they wanted to save the Jews they could without provoking the Nazis too much.
I think whole ideal of Kibbutz kind of reminds me of share cropping after the emancipation of slavery. It also reminds me of the movement to move back to Africa? Why do you think this movement was more successful.
I think that your digital artifact is a really interesting intersection of private business and international politics. One the one hand, a company is trying to advertise its product and make some money, and on the other hand the image is making a statement about who is and should be growing things in the disputed area of Palestine.