Hitler Push: Anti-Zionist Jews into the arms of Zionism
With considerable perspicacity the CV remarked that the recognition by the Zionists of “certain postulates of the German nationalists” provided the anti-Semites with ammunition, and in a declaration of policy made by the CV, there was even talk of Zionism having dealt the movement a “stab in the back” in the struggle against fascism.13 But the Zionists saw that only the anti- Semitic Hitler was likely to push anti-Zionist German Jews into the arms of Zionism. Robert Weltsch who was then editor-in-chief of the German Zionist paper, Judische Rund-
THE SECRET CONTACTS:ZIONISM AND NAZI GERMANY, 1933-1941
THE SECRET CONTACTS:ZIONISM AND NAZI GERMANY, 1933-1941
KLAUS POLKEHN*
Anti-Semitism became official German government policy when Hitler was named Chancellor of the German Reich on January 30, 1933. The spring of 1933 also witnessed the beginning of a period of private cooperation between Zionism and the German fascist regime to increase the inflow of German Jewish immigrants and capital to Palestine. The Zionist authorities succeeded in keeping this cooperation a secret for a long period, and only since the beginning of the 1960’s have criticisms of it been expressed here and there. The Zionist reaction has usually consisted of declarations that their onetime contacts with Nazi Germany were undertaken solely to save the lives of Jews. But the contacts were all the more remarkable because they took place at a time when many Jews and Jewish organizations demanded a boycott of Nazi Germany.
On the occasion of the Sixteenth Convention of the Israeli Communist Party, a paper was submitted at the outset of the conference in which it was stated that “after Hitler’s taking of power in Germany, when all anti-fascist forces in the world and the great majority of Jewish organizations proclaimed a boycott against Nazi Germany, contacts and collaboration existed between Zionist leaders and the Hitlerite government.”1 The paper quoted the Zionist official Eliezer Livneh (who had been editor of the Haganah organ during the Second World War) as declaring, during a symposium organized by the Israeli newspaper Maariv in 1966, “that for the Zionist leadership the rescue of Jews was not an aim in itself, but only a means”2 to establishing a Jewish state in Palestine). To question the reaction of the Zionist movement to German fascism, which in the course of its twelve-year rule murdered
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* Polkehn, a prominent journalist in the German Democratic Republic, is the author of several articles on the Palestine problem.
1 Information Bulletin, Communist Party of Isreal, 3-4, 1969, p. 196.
2 Information Bulletin 3-4, 1969, p. 197.
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millions of Jews, is a taboo in the eyes of the Zionist leaders. Only rarely is it possible to come across authentic evidence or documents concerning these occurrences. The following enquiry consists of information gathered up to this date about some important aspects of the cooperation between the Zionists and the fascists. It remains in the nature of things that this enquiry does not present a complete picture. This can only be possible when the archives (above all those in Israel), in which the documents concerning these events are under lock and key,3 are made available for scholarly research.
The Advent of Hiter
To the Zionist leaders, Hitler’s assumption of power held out the possibility of a flow of immigrants to Palestine. Previously, the majority of German Jews, who identified themselves as Germans, had little sympathy with Zionist endeavours. German statistic, compiled prior to the assumption of power by the fascists, classified the Jewish minority only under the heading “Religious Faith,” and it was left to the fascist legislators to introduce the concept “race” as a characteristic and thereby include even the long-assimilated descendants of members of the Jewish community as Jews.
According to the statistics, there lived in Germany in 1933 503,000 Jews, constituting 0.76 percent of the total population. Thirty-one percent of all German Jews lived in the capital, Berlin, where they made up 4.3 percent of the city’s population. German statistics also indicate that the population of the Jews in Germany decreased in the years between 1871 and 1933 from 1.05 percent to 0.76 percent.4
These German Jews were overwhelmingly non or anti-Zionist, and prior to 1937, the Zionist Union for Germany (Zionistische Vereinigung fur Deutschland (henceforth ZVFD) experienced great difficulty in gaining a hearing. Amongst the Jews of Germany counted in the year________________
3 in the book Das Leben der Juden in Deutschland Jahre 1933 (Life of the Jews in German in 1933) by Kurt Jacob Ball-Kaduri (Frankfurt am Main, 1963) are cited, among others, the following “unpublished sources” which are kept in the Yad-Vashem Archive in Jerusalem.”Contributions to the history of the Haavara transfers” by Dr. Leo David” (YWA 01/277), “Negotiations with the Gestapo in Berlin about Emigration 1936-1938″ (YWA 01/130),”Leo Plaut and the Gestapo Chief Diels in Berlin in the YEARS 1933/34” (YWA 01/229), all in German.
4 These statistics are compiled according to Esta Bennathan. “Die demographische und wirtschaftliche Struktur der Juden,” Entscheidungsjahre, 1932 . Zur Judenfrage in der Weimarer Republik (“The demographic and economic structure of the Jews,” The Crucial Year, 1932, Concerning the Jewish Question in the Weimar Republic), Tubinger, 1966, p. 89, 95.
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1925, there were, for example, only 8,739 persons (not even 2 percent) eligible to vote in the Zionist Conventions (that is, as members of Zionist organization).5 At the regional elections of the Jewish community in Prussia that were held in February 1925, only 26 members out of 124- elected belonged to Zionist groups.6 A report by the Keren Hayesod submitted to the twenty-fourth session of the ZVFD in July, 1932, said: “In the course of evaluating the Keren Hayesod work in Germany, it should never be forgotten that we in Germany have to reckon not only with the indifference of extensive Jewish circles but also with their hostility.”7
Thus at the time of the Hitler takeover the Zionists were a fundamentally small and insignificant minority with little influence and it was the non-Zionist organizations that played the dominant role amongst the Jews. At their head was the Centralverein deutscher Staatsburger judischen Glaubens (CV, or Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith), founded in 1893, which, as its name implies, considered German Jews as Germans and regarded its chief duty as being to combat anti-Semitism.
Corresponding to this fundamental position, the CV also declared its sharp rejection of Zionism. Thus a resolution passed by the main council of the CV on April 10,1921, concluded with the words: “If the work for settlement in Palestine were nothing more than a task of aid and assistance, then from the point of view of the Centralverein nothing would be said against the promotion of this work. However, the settlement in Palestine is in the first place an object of national Jewish policy and hence its promotion and support should be rejected.”8 Consequently, it was the CV above all which, in the years prior to Hitler’s assumption of power, stood in the forefront of the progressive parties and organizations in their fight against anti-Semitism. Regarding this attitude the Jewish author Weener E. Mosse remarked: “While the leaders of the CV saw it as their special duty to represent the interests of the German Jews in the active political struggle, Zionism stood for… systematic Jewish non-participation in German public life. It rejected as a matter of principle any participation
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5 Dr. Alfred Wiener, Juden und Araber in Palastina (Jews and Arabs in Palestine), Berlin, p, 36
6 According to Wiener, op. cit., 36
7 Quoted from Kurt Lorwenstein, Die innerjudische Reaktion urf die Krise der duetschen Demokratie (The Internal Jewish Reaction to the Crisis of German Democracy), in “The Crucial Year 1932,” p. 30.
8 Quoted from Dr. Alfred Wiener, kritische Reise durch Palastina (Critical Journey through Palestine), 1927, Berlin, p.8
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in the struggle led by the CV,” 9
The attitude of the Zionists towards the encroaching menace of fascist domination in Germany was determined by some common ideological assumptions; the fascists as well as the Zionists believed in unscientific racial theories, and both met on the sane ground in their beliefs in such mystical generalizations as “national character (Volkstum) and “race”, both were chauvinistic and inclined towards “racial exclusiveness.” Thus the Zionist official Gerhart Holdheim wrote in 1930 in an edition of the Suddeutsche Monatshefte, dedicated to the Jewish question(a publication in which, amongst others, leading anti-Semites aired their views): “The Zionist programme encompasses the conception of homogeneous, indivisible Jewry on a national basis. The criterion for Jewry is hence not a confession of religion, but the all-embracing sense of belonging to a racial community that is bound together by ties of blood and history and which is determined to keep its national individuality.”10 That was the same language, the same phraseology, as the fascists used. No wonder then that the German fascists welcomed the conceptions of the Zionists, with Alfred Rosenberg, the chief ideologue of the Nazi party, writing: “Zionism must be vigorously supported so that a certain number of German Jews is transported annually to Palestine or at least made to leave the country,”11 With an eye on such statements, Hans Lamm later wrote: “..it is indisputable that during the first stages of their Jewish policy, the National Socialists thought it proper to adopt a pro-Zionist attitude:”l2
With considerable perspicacity the CV remarked that the recognition by the Zionists of “certain postulates of the German nationalists” provided the anti-Semites with ammunition, and in a declaration of policy made by the CV, there was even talk of Zionism having dealt the movement a “stab in the back” in the struggle against fascism.13 But the Zionists saw that only the anti- Semitic Hitler was likely to push anti-Zionist German Jews into the arms of Zionism. Robert Weltsch who was then editor-in-chief of the German Zionist paper, Judische Rund-schau, declared on January 8, 1933 (three weeks after Hitler’s assumption of power) during the meeting of the local ZVFD Council. “The anti-liberal character of German nationalism [i.e., the reactionary tendencies of the German bourgeoisie — K.P.] meet with the anti-liberal position of Zionism and here we are faced with the chance of finding, not a basis for understanding but one for discussion.” 14