It turns out all those who clamoured for Ken Livingstone to be
suspended from the Labour Party – on the basis that Nazi Germany and
Zionist Jews never had an agreement – were completely wrong.
Perhaps John Mann needs to reconsider his actions of earlier today
(April 28) – along with all those who accused Livingstone of “rewriting
history” when he really was simply quoting it. It shows that in order to find out who controls your nation , learn whom one dare not critisise
From Wikeopeada
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 (under the
directive of the Jewish Agency) and the economic authorities of Nazi
Germany.
The agreement was designed to help facilitate the emigration of German Jews to Palestine.
While it helped Jews emigrate, it forced them to temporarily give up
possessions to Germany before departing. Those possessions could later
be re-obtained by transferring them to Palestine as German export goods.
The agreement was controversial at the time, and was criticised by
many Jewish leaders both within the Zionist movement and outside it.
Hitler’s own support of the Haavara Agreement was unclear and varied throughout the 1930s.
Initially, Hitler criticized the agreement, but reversed his opinion and supported it in the period 1937-1939.
Also from with more objective information
Zionism and the Third Reich
by Mark Weber
Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the
German port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its
name, "Tel Aviv," while a swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And
although the ship was Zionist-owned, its captain was a National
Socialist Party member. Many years later a traveler aboard the ship
recalled this symbolic combination as a "metaphysical absurdity."/1
Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a little-known chapter of
history: The wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler's
Third Reich.
Common Aims
Over the years, people in many different countries have wrestled with
the "Jewish question": that is, what is the proper role of Jews in
non-Jewish society? During the 1930s, Jewish Zionists and German
National Socialists shared similar views on how to deal with this
perplexing issue. They agreed that Jews and Germans were distinctly
different nationalities, and that Jews did not belong in Germany. Jews
living in the Reich were therefore to be regarded not as "Germans of the
Jewish faith," but rather as members of a separate national community.
Zionism (Jewish nationalism) also implied an obligation by Zionist Jews
to resettle in Palestine, the "Jewish homeland." They could hardly
regard themselves as sincere Zionists and simultaneously claim equal
rights in Germany or any other "foreign" country.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, maintained
that anti-Semitism is not an aberration, but a natural and completely
understandable response by non-Jews to alien Jewish behavior and
attitudes. The only solution, he argued, is for Jews to recognize
reality and live in a separate state of their own. "The Jewish question
exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers," he wrote in his most
influential work,
The Jewish State. "Where it does not exist, it
is brought in by arriving Jews ... I believe I understand anti-Semitism,
which is a very complex phenomenon. I consider this development as a
Jew, without hate or fear." The Jewish question, he maintained, is not
social or religious. "It is a national question. To solve it we must,
above all, make it an international political issue ..." Regardless of
their citizenship, Herzl insisted, Jews constitute not merely a
religious community, but a nationality, a people, a
Volk. /2 Zionism, wrote Herzl, offered the world a welcome "final solution of the Jewish question."/3
Six months after Hitler came to power, the Zionist Federation of
Germany (by far the largest Zionist group in the country) submitted a
detailed memorandum to the new government that reviewed German-Jewish
relations and formally offered Zionist support in "solving" the vexing
"Jewish question." The first step, it suggested, had to be a frank
recognition of fundamental national differences: /4
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the
Jewish condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational
pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted
in one's own tradition. Zionism recognized decades ago that as a result
of the assimilationist trend, symptoms of deterioration were bound to
appear ...
Zionism believes that the rebirth of the national life of a people,
which is now occurring in Germany through the emphasis on its Christian
and national character, must also come about in the Jewish national
group. For the Jewish people, too, national origin, religion, common
destiny and a sense of its uniqueness must be of decisive importance in
the shaping of its existence. This means that the egotistical
individualism of the liberal era must be overcome and replaced with a
sense of community and collective responsibility ...
We believe it is precisely the new [National Socialist] Germany that
can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question,
take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will
have to be dealt with by most European peoples ...
Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial
realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these
fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for
maintaining the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in
the cultural domain, we -- having been brought up in the German language
and German culture -- can show an interest in the works and values of
German culture with admiration and internal sympathy ...
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the
collaboration of even a government fundamentally hostile to Jews,
because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are
involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples and at
the present moment especially the German people ...
Boycott propaganda -- such as is currently being carried on against
Germany in many ways -- is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants
not to do battle but to convince and to build ...
We are not blind to the fact that a Jewish question exists and will
continue to exist. From the abnormal situation of the Jews severe
disadvantages result for them, but also scarcely tolerable conditions
for other peoples.
The Federation's paper, the
Jüdische Rundschau ("Jewish
Review"), proclaimed the same message: "Zionism recognizes the existence
of a Jewish problem and desires a far-reaching and constructive
solution. For this purpose Zionism wishes to obtain the assistance of
all peoples, whether pro- or anti-Jewish, because, in its view, we are
dealing here with a concrete rather than a sentimental problem, the
solution of which all peoples are interested."/5 A young Berlin rabbi,
Joachim Prinz, who later settled in the United States and became head of
the American Jewish Congress, wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden ("We
Jews"), that the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant "Jewry
for the Jews." He explained: "No subterfuge can save us now. In place of
assimilation we desire a new concept: recognition of the Jewish nation
and Jewish race." /6
Active Collaboration
On this basis of their similar ideologies about ethnicity and
nationhood, National Socialists and Zionists worked together for what
each group believed was in its own national interest. As a result, the
Hitler government vigorously supported Zionism and Jewish emigration to
Palestine from 1933 until 1940-1941, when the Second World War prevented
extensive collaboration.
Even as the Third Reich became more entrenched, many German Jews,
probably a majority, continued to regard themselves, often with
considerable pride, as Germans first. Few were enthusiastic about
pulling up roots to begin a new life in far-away Palestine.
Nevertheless, more and more German Jews turned to Zionism during this
period. Until late 1938, the Zionist movement flourished in Germany
under Hitler. The circulation of the Zionist Federation's bi-weekly
Jüdische Rundschau
grew enormously. Numerous Zionist books were published. "Zionist work
was in full swing" in Germany during those years, the Encyclopaedia
Judaica notes. A Zionist convention held in Berlin in 1936 reflected "in
its composition the vigorous party life of German Zionists."/7
The SS was particularly enthusiastic in its support for Zionism. An
internal June 1934 SS position paper urged active and wide-ranging
support for Zionism by the government and the Party as the best way to
encourage emigration of Germany's Jews to Palestine. This would require
increased Jewish self-awareness. Jewish schools, Jewish sports leagues,
Jewish cultural organizations -- in short, everything that would
encourage this new consciousness and self-awareness - should be
promoted, the paper recommended. /8
SS officer Leopold von Mildenstein and Zionist Federation official
Kurt Tuchler toured Palestine together for six months to assess Zionist
development there. Based on his firsthand observations, von Mildenstein
wrote a series of twelve illustrated articles for the important Berlin
daily
Der Angriff that appeared in late 1934 under the heading "A
Nazi Travels to Palestine." The series expressed great admiration for
the pioneering spirit and achievements of the Jewish settlers. Zionist
self-development, von Mildenstein wrote, had produced a new kind of Jew.
He praised Zionism as a great benefit for both the Jewish people and
the entire world. A Jewish homeland in Palestine, he wrote in his
concluding article, "pointed the way to curing a centuries-long wound on
the body of the world: the Jewish question."
Der Angriff issued a
special medal, with a Swastika on one side and a Star of David on the
other, to commemorate the joint SS-Zionist visit. A few months after the
articles appeared, von Mildenstein was promoted to head the Jewish
affairs department of the SS security service in order to support
Zionist migration and development more effectively. /9
The official SS newspaper,
Das Schwarze Korps, proclaimed its
support for Zionism in a May 1935 front-page editorial: "The time may
not be too far off when Palestine will again be able to receive its sons
who have been lost to it for more than a thousand years. Our good
wishes, together with official goodwill, go with them."/10 Four months
later, a similar article appeared in the SS paper: /11
The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on
blood and not on religion leads the German government to guarantee
without reservation the racial separateness of this community. The
government finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual
movement within Jewry, the so-called Zionism, with its recognition of
the solidarity of Jewry around the world and its rejection of all
assimilationist notions. On this basis, Germany undertakes measures that
will surely play a significant role in the future in the handling of
the Jewish problem around the world.
A leading German shipping line began direct passenger liner service
from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, in October 1933 providing "strictly
kosher food on its ships, under the supervision of the Hamburg
rabbinate." /12
With official backing, Zionists worked tirelessly to "reeducate"
Germany's Jews. As American historian Francis Nicosia put it in his 1985
survey, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question: "Zionists were
encouraged to take their message to the Jewish community, to collect
money, to show films on Palestine and generally to educate German Jews
about Palestine. There was considerable pressure to teach Jews in
Germany to cease identifying themselves as Germans and to awaken a new
Jewish national identity in them." /13
In an interview after the war, the former head of the Zionist
Federation of Germany, Dr. Hans Friedenthal, summed up the situation:
"The Gestapo did everything in those days to promote emigration,
particularly to Palestine. We often received their help when we required
anything from other authorities regarding preparations for emigration."
/14
At the September 1935 National Socialist Party Congress, the
Reichstag adopted the so-called "Nuremberg laws" that prohibited
marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans and, in effect,
proclaimed the Jews an alien minority nationality. A few days later the
Zionist
Jüdische Rundschau editorially welcomed the new measures: /15
Germany ... is meeting the demands of the World Zionist
Congress when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a
national minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority
it is again possible to establish normal relations between the German
nation and Jewry. The new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its
own cultural life, its own national life. In future it will be able to
shape its own schools, its own theatre, and its own sports associations.
In short, it can create its own future in all aspects of national life
...
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for
itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the
Jewish minority: Jewry's process of growth into a nation will thereby be
encouraged and a contribution will be made to the establishment of more
tolerable relations between the two nations.
Georg Kareski, the head of both the "Revisionist" Zionist State
Organization and the Jewish Cultural League, and former head of the
Berlin Jewish Community, declared in an interview with the Berlin daily
Der Angriff at the end of 1935: /16
For many years I have regarded a complete separation of
the cultural affairs of the two peoples [Jews and Germans] as a
pre-condition for living together without conflict... I have long
supported such a separation, provided it is founded on respect for the
alien nationality. The Nuremberg Laws ... seem to me, apart from their
legal provisions, to conform entirely with this desire for a separate
life based on mutual respect... This interruption of the process of
dissolution in many Jewish communities, which had been promoted through
mixed marriages, is therefore, from a Jewish point of view, entirely
welcome.
Zionist leaders in other countries echoed these views. Stephen S.
Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish
Congress, told a New York rally in June 1938: "I am not an American
citizen of the Jewish faith, I am a Jew... Hitler was right in one
thing. He calls the Jewish people a race and we are a race." /17
The Interior Ministry's Jewish affairs specialist, Dr. Bernhard
Lösener, expressed support for Zionism in an article that appeared in a
November 1935 issue of the official Reichsverwaltungsblatt: /18
If the Jews already had their own state in which the
majority of them were settled, then the Jewish question could be
regarded as completely resolved today, also for the Jews themselves. The
least amount of opposition to the ideas underlying the Nuremberg Laws
have been shown by the Zionists, because they realize at once that these
laws represent the only correct solution for the Jewish people as well.
For each nation must have its own state as the outward expression of
its particular nationhood.
In cooperation with the German authorities, Zionist groups organized a
network of some forty camps and agricultural centers throughout Germany
where prospective settlers were trained for their new lives in
Palestine. Although the Nuremberg Laws forbid Jews from displaying the
German flag, Jews were specifically guaranteed the right to display the
blue and white Jewish national banner. The flag that would one day be
adopted by Israel was flown at the Zionist camps and centers in Hitler's
Germany. /19
Himmler's security service cooperated with the Haganah, the Zionist
underground military organization in Palestine. The SS agency paid
Haganah official Feivel Polkes for information about the situation in
Palestine and for help in directing Jewish emigration to that country.
Meanwhile, the Haganah was kept well informed about German plans by a
spy it managed to plant in the Berlin headquarters of the SS. /20
Haganah-SS collaboration even included secret deliveries of German
weapons to Jewish settlers for use in clashes with Palestinian Arabs.
/21
In the aftermath of the November 1938 "Kristallnacht" outburst of
violence and destruction, the SS quickly helped the Zionist organization
to get back on its feet and continue its work in Germany, although now
under more restricted supervision. /22
Official Reservations
German support for Zionism was not unlimited. Government and Party
officials were very mindful of the continuing campaign by powerful
Jewish communities in the United States, Britain and other countries to
mobilize "their" governments and fellow citizens against Germany. As
long as world Jewry remained implacably hostile toward National
Socialist Germany, and as long as the great majority of Jews around the
world showed little eagerness to resettle in the Zionist "promised
land," a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine would not really "solve"
the international Jewish question. Instead, German officials reasoned,
it would immeasurably strengthen this dangerous anti-German campaign.
German backing for Zionism was therefore limited to support for a Jewish
homeland in Palestine under British control, not a sovereign Jewish
state. /23
A Jewish state in Palestine, the Foreign Minister informed diplomats
in June 1937, would not be in Germany's interest because it would not be
able to absorb all Jews around the world, but would only serve as an
additional power base for international Jewry, in much the same way as
Moscow served as a base for international Communism. /24 Reflecting
something of a shift in official policy, the German press expressed much
greater sympathy in 1937 for Palestinian Arab resistance to Zionist
ambitions, at a time when tension and conflict between Jews and Arabs in
Palestine was sharply increasing. /25
A Foreign Office circular bulletin of June 22, 1937, cautioned that
in spite of support for Jewish settlement in Palestine, "it would
nevertheless be a mistake to assume that Germany supports the formation
of a state structure in Palestine under some form of Jewish control. In
view of the anti-German agitation of international Jewry, Germany cannot
agree that the formation of a Palestine Jewish state would help the
peaceful development of the nations of the world."/26 "The proclamation
of a Jewish state or a Jewish-administrated Palestine," warned an
internal memorandum by the Jewish affairs section of the SS, "would
create for Germany a new enemy, one that would have a deep influence on
developments in the Near East." Another SS agency predicted that a
Jewish state "would work to bring special minority protection to Jews in
every country, therefore giving legal protection to the exploitation
activity of world Jewry."/27 In January 1939, Hitler's new Foreign
Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, likewise warned in another circular
bulletin that "Germany must regard the formation of a Jewish state as
dangerous" because it "would bring an international increase in power to
world Jewry." /28
Hitler himself personally reviewed this entire issue in early 1938
and, in spite of his long-standing skepticism of Zionist ambitions and
misgivings that his policies might contribute to the formation of a
Jewish state, decided to support Jewish migration to Palestine even more
vigorously. The prospect of ridding Germany of its Jews, he concluded,
outweighed the possible dangers. /29
Meanwhile, the British government imposed ever more drastic
restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine in 1937, 1938 and
1939. In response, the SS security service concluded a secret alliance
with the clandestine Zionist agency Mossad le-Aliya Bet to smuggle Jews
illegally into Palestine. As a result of this intensive collaboration,
several convoys of ships succeeded in reaching Palestine past British
gunboats. Jewish migration, both legal and illegal, from Germany
(including Austria) to Palestine increased dramatically in 1938 and
1939. Another 10,000 Jews were scheduled to depart in October 1939, but
the outbreak of war in September brought the effort to an end. All the
same, German authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish emigration
to Palestine during 1940 and 1941. /30 Even as late as March 1942, at
least one officially authorized Zionist "kibbutz" training camp for
potential emigrants continued to operate in Hitler's Germany. /31
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