In the early 1930s there was a political transfer of power in Germany to the Nazi party. At this time, the party was led by Adolf Hitler and he was known for his views and his agenda for the future of Germany. Part of his views, which were shared by a majority of the Nazi party, involved a great deal of antisemitism. As a direct effect of these values, the Jewish people in Germany were treated as second-class citizens. They became unwelcome in their own cities and neighborhoods. This poor display of human treatment resulted in many Jews emigrating from Germany to Palestine, which was initially encouraged by the German government. According to T. Segev’s The Streets Are Paved with Money, “many German Jews who had been forced out of their jobs continued to receive their monthly social-security pensions in Palestine.”
March 1933: Opinions for the Jewish Peoples
It was arranged between the German government and the Zionist party for Jews to be able to emigrate and transfer their property to Palestine at a 35% loss, often accompanied by a two year waiting period. This form of compliance and collaboration was considered a “win-win” situation as it benefited both the Germans and the Jews. Germany lost Jews and Palestine gained manpower and growth in economic imports. But for those Jews that remained in Germany, life became more and more unpleasant leading up to World War II. Jews were not allowed in non-Jew stores and the SA blocked non-Jews from shopping in Jewish shops. As pictured above, the Jewish people (primarily outside of Germany) called for a boycott of German goods until their demands for a separate Jewish state were met. The Revisionists, a party among the Jewish people in Germany, opposed the Zionists deal with the German government and even “charged that the Hebrew nation’s honor, rights, security, and position in the world ‘had been sold to Hitler for a whore’s wages’.” The Zionists of Palestine believed that what their uneven collaboration with Germany was all they could do to save as many German Jews as possible from the worsening conditions in the nation. A Jew named Ben-Gurion went as far to say, “If I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second–because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people.” The Jewish people were ultimately proud of their heritage and wanted to protect it, at the expense of ultimate sacrifice. Their pride would ultimately cost more Jewish lives. And so, the German antisemitic behavior worsened until the start of the Holocaust and continued until the liberation of the surviving Jews at the end of the war.
Following the war, displaced Jews were given the opportunity to set up agricultural training farms on the captured land of antisemitic German leaders. According to Avinoam J. Patt’s Living in Landsberg, Dreaming of Deganiah, these farms were set up to prepare the displaced Jews for their future lives in Palestine. These farms were like a smack in the face to the crumbling Nazi Germany. This led Eliyahu Dobkin, the head of the Jewish Agency’s aliyah department, to ask Jews settled at these training farms to stay in Germany even if they were given “the means to proceed to Palestine.” The Jews had to regain and maintain their pride by acting as a political symbol. In the end, many displaced Jews ignored Dobkins request and traveled to Palestine to begin their new life in the Jewish state. Ultimately, the pride of the Jewish people acted as a hindrance to their individual survival, but served as a preserver of their national heritage.
I really like the political aspects your blog incorporated into this topic! The parties’ effects are clearly seen within this topic, so it’s awesome to look at their goals/motives to understand their actions more fully.
It is interesting to view the negotiation the Jews had with Germany as a win-win. It is, in fact, a win-win as you mentioned, because the Zionists would receive followers, while Germany could rid themselves of their Jews, but it is hard to think that a Jewish person would be okay with this arrangement. On one hand, going to Palestine would ensure they would remove themselves from the discrimination they were facing in Germany, and on the other hand losing 35% of their possessions could be a big issue for families trying to drop everything and start a new life elsewhere.
I found this article to be very enlightening, as I head never realized that there was some form of negotiation between the Nazi government and the Jewish officials prior to this reading. I suppose that the Nazis were attempting a kind of economic ethnic-cleansing, one that may have been harsh and inhumane, but it certainly was a better method than the full-fledged genocidal campaign that would come some years later.