 | |
| Author | Edwin Black |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | History, Politics |
| Publisher | Dialog Press |
Publication date | 1984 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 194 |
| ISBN | 0-914153-13-7 |
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 ("Haavara Agreement" in Hebrew) between Zionist organizations and Nazi Germany to transfer a number of Jews and their assets to Palestine.
Black is the son of Holocaust survivors from Poland. [1] [2] In The Transfer Agreement, he notes that following in the beliefs of his parents, he was from his earliest days a supporter of the State of Israel. [2]
In 1978, as a young journalist, Black interviewed the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented members of the American Nazi Party, which had marched provocatively through the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie. [3] In preparing himself for that interview, Black's interest was piqued by the hidden history of relations between the government of Adolf Hitler and German-Jewish Zionists during the first years of the Nazi regime. Five years of research followed, ending in publication of The Transfer Agreement. [4]
This book documents the agreement between Nazi Germany and an organization of German Zionists in 1933 to salvage some German Jewish assets and the voluntary emigration of German Jews to Palestine before the Third Reich implemented expulsion and then extermination. The Transfer Agreement rescued some 60,000 German Jews. A sweeping, worldwide economic boycott of Germany by Jews helped spur a deal between the Nazis and Zionists. [5]
The book also documents the controversy within the Zionist movement and Jewish diaspora over the agreement, which Black shows "tore apart the Jewish world in the pre-World War II era". In particular, it describes the conflict between, on one side, German Zionists and German-descended communal leaders in the US, who argued for the agreement, and, on the other side, the mainstream Eastern European-descended American Jewish Zionist leaders (such as the American Jewish Committee and Jewish War Veterans) who opposed the agreement and argued instead for a full boycott of Nazi Germany.
After its publication, the book was cited by far-right activist Lyndon LaRouche and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to claim that Zionism was a racist movement that collaborated with Nazi Germany so that wealthy Germans could transfer their assets to Palestine. [6]
In a review in the academic journal Shofar , scholar Lawrence Baron noted the controversy generated by Black's conclusion that the World Zionist Organization (WZO) broke the potentially successful anti-Nazi boycott of Germany to fortify the Jewish presence in Palestine. Baron described the book as "a well-written and diligently documented narrative"; however, he stated it indulged in dubious retrospective speculation and cast unfair aspersions on the motives of those who defended the WZO. To Baron, Black's portrayal of the Zionist leadership's strategy as "one-sided", with his criticisms "ahistorical and simplistic". [6]
Historians Ben Halpern and Henry Feingold wrote highly critical reviews. Historian Richard S. Levy in Commentary wrote, "[Black] relies on outmoded secondary works, makes numerous errors, and distorts his subject [...] Black’s neglect of the secondary scholarly literature is perverse and leads him to his most serious error of judgment—drastic overestimation of the political and economic efficacy of the boycott weapon." He further described the book as "conspiracy-mongering, innuendo, and sensationalism." [7]
The World Zionist Organization, or WZO, is a non-governmental organization that promotes Zionism. It was founded as the Zionist Organization at the initiative of Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress, which took place in August 1897 in Basel, Switzerland. The goals of the Zionist movement were set out in the Basel Program.
Edwin Black is an American historian and author, as well as a syndicated columnist, investigative journalist, and weekly talk show host on The Edwin Black Show. He specializes in human rights, the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East, petroleum policy, academic fraud, corporate criminality and abuse, and the financial underpinnings of Nazi Germany.
Arthur Ruppin was a German Zionist proponent of pseudoscientific race theory and one of the founders of the city of Tel Aviv. Appointed director of Berlin's Bureau for Jewish statistics in 1904, he moved to Palestine in 1907, and from 1908 was the director of the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization in Jaffa, organizing Zionist immigration to Palestine. In 1926, Ruppin joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and founded the Department for the Sociology of the Jews. Described posthumously as the "founder of German-Jewish demography" and "father of Israeli sociology", his best known sociological work was The Jews in the Modern World (1934).
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Max Naumann was the founder of Verband nationaldeutscher Juden, which called for the elimination of Jewish ethnic identity through Jewish assimilation. The league was outlawed by the Nazi government on 18 November 1935.
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The Haavara Agreement was an agreement between Nazi Germany and Zionist German Jews signed on 25 August 1933. The agreement was finalized after three months of talks by the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank 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.
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Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.
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.
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This timeline of anti-Zionism chronicles the history of anti-Zionism, including events in the history of anti-Zionist thought.
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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, outspoken pro-Palestinian activist, Trotskyist and Jewish author Lenni Brenner. The book makes the argument 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.
Edwin Black talked about his book The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine (Dialog Press; 25th anniversary ed. August 25, 2009). He pieced together the story of an agreement made between Hitler's government and a group of Zionist leaders in 1933. The agreement called for the transfer of 55,000 Jews and $100 million to Palestine in exchange for calling off a planned economic boycott of Nazi Germany by Jewish organizations. For his only planned presentation on the release of the 25th anniversary edition of his controversial volume Edwin Black was interviewed by Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt. He also responded to questions from members of the audience and those submitted in advance electronically. Mitchell Bard moderated. This event at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Rockville, Maryland, at 2:30 p.m. Friday, October 30, 2009, was sponsored by the History News Network and cosponsored by Jewish Virtual Library, State of California Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Institute for Religion and Public Policy, Binghamton Social Justice Fund, Spero News, The Auto Channel, Energy Publisher, The Cutting Edge News and Dialog Press
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