In 1933, an mutually beneficial agreement was signed between two unlikely groups: Zionist groups in Palestine and Nazi Germany. On August 25, the Haavara agreement was made into lawful policy, allowing German Jews to liquidate their assets in Germany, move to British Palestine as capitalists, and reclaim their capital in their new land, surrounded by a Jewish community. As unlikely as it may seem for Jews and Nazi to work together, please keep in mind that this was six years before World War Two broke out and eight years before the worst of German treatment of Jews. As Ruppin states in Segev’s article, “Had I not known from the newspapers… how much the… situation of the Jews had worsened as a result of [Nazi] government decrees, I would not have sensed it at all on the streets, at least not in Berlin (19).” So, before the mass extermination that marked the Holocaust, this agreement was a viable and helpful arrangement, allowing Germany to more humanely eject Jews and allowing Jews to safely relocate without losing almost everything.
Although the Haavara agreement may be seen as a win-win, it was spurred on by increasingly terrible conditions for Jews and faced opposition from revisionist Zionists. They decried any agreements or communications with Nazi Germany, calling the Haavara “ignoble, disgraceful, and contemptible (Segev, 24).” Revisionists saw this agreement not as a means of escaping Nazism, but as inviting Nazi ideas and, to some, Hitler himself into the Jewish community in Palestine. It was a battle between pragmatic solutions to help endangered, unwanted Jews and emotional, cautious responses to Nazi aggression, fought in the hearts and minds of Zionists.
While Zionists either advertised Palestine as a good place for Jews to live or fully decried Nazism, Germany was working on changing the minds of Jews unwilling to relocate. Der Angriff, translated as “the attack”, was a Nazi newspaper that ran from 1927 to 1945 that propagated Nazi ideas and was centered in hate and distrust of a non-Nazi government. This newspaper ran biweekly series of articles in 1934-35 detailing a SS officer’s tour of Zionist Palestine and celebrated the Haavara as a way to de-Jewify Germany. It struck medals (pictured above) in commemoration of these articles and the perceived Jewish exodus.
I like that you brought up that the haavara agreement occurred before World War II and the tragedies of the Holocaust. One thing I don’t understand is why the rest of Europe didn’t see this as a warning sign. Granted as you mentioned in your blog, people couldn’t tell on the streets of Berlin that the Jews were disliked, but the newspapers showed dislike toward the Jews. Still wouldn’t other Europeans be interested in why Germany was trying to get rid of the Jews in their country even if they did have a working agreement with the Zionists in Palestine?
Antisemitism was hugely popular in all of Europe before the Holocaust, so if any countries took note of how the Germans were treating Jews, they didn’t care. Sovereignty was also a huge part of this, as states felt it was within their power to treat citizens however they wanted. Until the final solution (mass killings of Jews) began, it wasn’t other country’s business how Germany treated German Jews.
I agree with the notion that the Haavara was a win-win for both Germany and the Zionists. It allowed Germany to get rid of their Jewish population and for the Jewish community to start becoming unionized in Palestine. I think it is safe to say that Jews are one of the most attacks and persecuted minority groups in history. You can look back from the beginnings of the Jewish faith up until present time and see mass antisemitism in all time periods. In response to Professor Gitre’s final question from Tuesday’s class I would have tried and saves as many Jews as I could, and moved them into Palestine. This way we could have collected ourselves, and unified into a more homogeneous group.