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The Haavara Agreement (Hebrew : הֶסְכֵּם הַעֲבָרָה, romanized: heskem haavara, lit. 'transfer agreement') was an agreement between Nazi Germany and Zionist organizations signed on 25 August 1933. The agreement was finalized after three months of talks by the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank (under the directive of the Jewish Agency) and the economic authorities of Nazi Germany. It was a major factor in making possible the migration of approximately 60,000 German Jews to Palestine between 1933 and 1939. [1]
The agreement enabled Jews fleeing persecution under the new Nazi regime to transfer some portion of their assets to British Mandatory Palestine. [2] Emigrants sold their assets in Germany to pay for essential goods (manufactured in Germany) to be shipped to Mandatory Palestine. [3] [4] The agreement was controversial and was criticised by Revisionist Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky and by some non-Zionist Jews, as well as by members of both the Nazi Party and the German public. [4] For German Jews, the agreement offered a way to leave an increasingly hostile environment in Germany; for the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, it offered access to both immigrant labour and economic support; for the Germans it facilitated the emigration of German Jews while breaking the anti-Nazi boycott of 1933, which had mass support among European and American Jews and was thought by the German state to be a potential threat to the German economy. [4] [5]
Although the Nazi Party won the greatest share of the popular vote in the two Reichstag general elections of 1932, they did not have a majority, so Hitler led a short-lived coalition government formed by the Nazis and the German National People's Party. [6] Under pressure from politicians, industrialists and others, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. This event is known as the Machtergreifung (seizure of power). [7] In the following months, the Nazis used a process termed Gleichschaltung (roughly 'bringing into line') to consolidate power. [8] By June 1933, virtually the only organisations not under the control of the Nazi party were the army and the churches. [9]
Within the Nazi movement, a variety of increasingly radical "solutions" to the "Jewish Question" were proposed both before and while the Nazi party was in government, including expulsion and the encouragement of voluntary emigration. Widespread civil persecution of German Jews began as soon as the Nazis were in power. [10] For example, on 1 April, the Nazis organized a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany; under the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service , which was implemented on 7 April, Jews were excluded from the civil service; on 25 April, quotas were imposed on the number of Jews in schools and universities. Jews outside Germany responded to these persecutions with a boycott of German goods, which appeared to some Nazis to threaten the Reich. [11]
Meanwhile, in Mandatory Palestine, a growing Jewish population (174,610 in 1931, rising to 384,078 in 1936 and 600,000 in 1948 [12] ) was acquiring land and developing the structures of a future Jewish state despite conflicting sentiments within the population of Mandatory Palestine.
Hanotea (הַנּוֹטֵעַ 'the Planter') was a citrus planting company based in Netanya and established in 1929 by long-established Jewish settlers in Palestine involved in the Benei Binyamin movement. [14] In an arrangement with the Reich Economics Ministry, the blocked German bank accounts of prospective immigrants would be unblocked and funds from them used by Hanotea to buy agricultural German goods; these goods, along with the immigrants, would then go to Palestine, and the immigrants would be granted a house or citrus plantation by the company of the same value. [15] Hanotea's director, Sam Cohen, represented the company in direct negotiation with the Reich Economics Ministry beginning in March 1933. [16] In May 1933 Hanotea applied for permission to transfer capital from Germany to Palestine. [16] This pilot arrangement appeared to be operating successfully,[ citation needed ] and so paved the way for the later Haavara Agreement.
CERTIFICATE
The Trust and Transfer Office "Haavara" Ltd. places at the disposal of the Banks in Palestine amounts in Reichmarks which have been put at its disposal by the Jewish immigrants from Germany. The Banks avail themselves of these amounts in Reichmarks in order to make payments on behalf of Palestinian merchants for goods imported by them from Germany. The merchants pay in the value of the goods to the Banks and the "Haavara" Ltd. pays the countervalue to the Jewish immigrants from Germany. To the same extent that local merchants will make use of this arrangement, the import of German goods will serve to withdraw Jewish capital from Germany.
The Trust and Transfer Office,HAAVARA, LTD.
— Example of the certificate issued by Haavara to Jews emigrating to Palestine
The Haavara (Transfer) Agreement, negotiated by Eliezer Hoofein, director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, [17] was agreed to by the Reich Economics Ministry in 1933, and continued, with declining German government support, [18] until it was wound up in 1939. [19] The agreement provided a substantial export market for German factories in British-ruled Palestine. Between November 1933, and 31 December 1937, 77,800,000 Reichsmarks, or $22,500,000, (values in 1938 currency) worth of goods were exported to Jewish businesses in Palestine under the program. [18] By the time the program ended with the start of World War II, the total had risen to 105,000,000 marks (about $35,000,000, 1939 values). [19]
Emigrants with capital of £1,000, (about $5,000 in 1930s currency value) could move to Palestine in spite of severe British restrictions on Jewish immigration under an immigrant investor program similar to the modern United States EB-5 visa. Under the Transfer Agreement, about 39% of an emigrant's funds were given to Jewish communal economic development projects, leaving individuals with about 43% of the funds. [20] [21]
The Haavara Agreement was thought by some German circles to be a possible way to solve the "Jewish problem." The head of the Middle Eastern division of the foreign ministry, the anti-Nazi politician Werner Otto von Hentig, supported the policy of settling Jews in Palestine. Hentig believed that if the Jewish population was concentrated in a single foreign entity, then foreign diplomatic policy and containment of the Jews would become easier. [22] Hitler's own support of the Haavara Agreement was unclear and varied throughout the 1930s. Initially, Hitler seemed indifferent to the economic details of the plan, but he supported it in the period from September 1937 to 1939. [23]
After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 the program was ended. [19]
The agreement was controversial both within the Nazi party and in the Zionist movement. [24] As historian Edwin Black put it, "The Transfer Agreement tore the Jewish world apart, turning leader against leader, threatening rebellion and even assassination." [25] Opposition came from the mainstream US leadership of the World Zionist Congress, in particular Abba Hillel Silver and American Jewish Congress president Rabbi Stephen Wise. [26] Wise and other leaders of the Anti-Nazi boycott of 1933 argued against the agreement, narrowly failing to persuade the Nineteenth Zionist Congress in August 1935 to vote against it. [25]
The right-wing Revisionist Zionists and their leader Vladimir Jabotinsky were even more vocal in their opposition. [27] The Revisionist newspaper in Palestine, Hazit Haam published a sharp denunciation of those involved in the agreement as "betrayers", and shortly afterwards one of the negotiators, Haim Arlosoroff was assassinated. [25]
In the post-war period, the agreement has sometimes been cited by anti-Zionists, anti-Semites, and critics of Israel (Ken Livingstone, Lyndon LaRouche, Louis Farrakhan, Mark Weber, [28] Joseph Massad, [29] Mahmoud Abbas [30] ) as evidence of Nazi support for Zionism [31] or Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. [32]
The Évian Conference was convened 6–15 July 1938 at Évian-les-Bains, France, to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wishing to flee persecution by Nazi Germany. It was the initiative of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt who perhaps hoped to obtain commitments from some of the invited nations to accept more refugees, although he took pains to avoid stating that objective expressly. Historians have suggested that Roosevelt desired to deflect attention and criticism from American policy that severely limited the quota of refugees admitted to the United States.
The Madagascar Plan was a plan proposed by the Nazi German government to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, proposed the idea in June 1940, shortly before the Fall of France. The proposal called for the handing over of control of Madagascar, then a French colony, to Germany as part of the eventual peace terms.
Haim Arlosoroff was a Socialist Zionist leader of the Yishuv during the British Mandate for Palestine, prior to the establishment of Israel, and head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency. In 1933, Arlosoroff was assassinated while walking on the beach with his wife in Tel Aviv.
The Nuremberg Laws were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households; and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani and Black people. This supplementary decree defined Romani people as "enemies of the race-based state", the same category as Jews.
INTRIA is the acroymn for the International Trade and Investment Agency. It was an agency in the Ministry of Economics during Nazi Germany prior to and during World War II and responsible for transferring funds in connection to German Jews.
The Fifth Aliyah refers to the fifth wave of the Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe and Asia between the years 1929 and 1939, with the arrival of 225,000 to 300,000 Jews. The Fifth Aliyah, or fifth immigration wave, began after the comeback from the 1927 economic crisis in Mandatory Palestine and the 1929 Palestine riots, during the period of the Fourth Aliyah.
The Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany began on April 1, 1933, and was claimed to be a defensive reaction to the anti-Nazi boycott, which had been initiated in March 1933. It was largely unsuccessful, as the German population continued to use Jewish businesses, but revealed the intent of the Nazis to undermine the viability of Jews in Germany.
The anti-Nazi boycott was an international boycott of German products in response to violence and harassment by members of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party against Jews following his appointment as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Examples of Nazi violence and harassment included placing and throwing stink bombs, picketing, shopper intimidation, humiliation and assaults. The boycott was spearheaded by some Jewish organizations but opposed by others.
The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism is a book by Mahmoud Abbas, published in 1984 in Arabic. It was re-published in 2011. It is based on his CandSc thesis, completed in 1982 at Patrice Lumumba University under the title The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement, and defended at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The central thesis of the book is that the Zionist movement and its leaders were "fundamental partners" of the Nazis and equally responsible for the Holocaust.
Wir Juden is a 1934 book by German rabbi Joachim Prinz that concerns Hitler's rise to power as a demonstration of the defeat of liberalism and assimilation as a solution for the "Jewish Question", and advocated a Zionist alternative to save German Jews. The book urged German Jews to escape National Socialist persecution by emigrating to Palestine. Prinz himself was expelled in 1937, travelling to the US where he became a leader of the American Jewish community and the Civil Rights Movement.
The Association of German National Jews was a German Jewish organization during the Weimar Republic and the early years of Nazi Germany that eventually came out in support of Adolf Hitler.
The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine is a book written by author Edwin Black, documenting the transfer agreement between Zionist organizations and Nazi Germany to transfer a number of Jews and their assets to Palestine.
Leopold Itz, Edler von Mildenstein was an SS officer who is remembered as a leading supporter in the Nazi Party of some of the aims of Zionism during the 1930s.
Anti-Jewish boycotts are organized boycotts directed against Jewish people to exclude them economical, political or cultural life. Antisemitic boycotts are often regarded as a manifestation of popular antisemitism.
The Zionist Federation of Germany also known as the Zionist Association for Germany was a Zionist organisation in Germany that was formed in 1897 in Cologne by Max Bodenheimer, together with David Wolffsohn and Fabius Schach. It had attracted 10,000 members by 1914 and was by far the largest Zionist organisation in Germany. The group supported the 1933 Haavara Agreement between Nazi Germany and German Zionist Jews which was designed to encourage German Jews to emigrate to Palestine. They also opposed the Anti-Nazi boycott of 1933 fearing that it could make the existing Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses more severe.
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators is a 1983 work by the American free-lance journalist and author Lenni Brenner arguing that Zionist leaders collaborated with fascism, particularly in Nazi Germany, in order to build up a Jewish presence in Palestine.
Francis R. Nicosia was an American historian at the University of Vermont with a focus on modern history and Holocaust research.
The Holocaust in Germany was the systematic persecution, deportation, imprisonment, and murder of Jews in Germany as part of the Europe-wide Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. The term typically refers only to the areas that were part of Germany prior to the Nazi regime coming to power and excludes some or all of the territories annexed by Nazi Germany, such as Austria or the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
The claim that there was a Jewish war against Nazi Germany is an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted in Nazi propaganda which asserts that the Jews, framed within the theory as a single historical actor, started World War II and sought the destruction of Germany. Alleging that war was declared in 1939 by Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, Nazis used this false notion to justify the persecution of Jews under German control on the grounds that the Holocaust was justified self-defense. Since the end of World War II, the conspiracy theory has been popular among neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.
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