The Transfer Agreement (72 page)

"Here it is possible. Here people, who in regard to the world in general can be called almost socialist, here they can operate even with ... the Revisionists. While here, he [Wise] has chosen to associate himself with those who are helping to create an atmosphere similar to Hitler's."
²⁷

Addressing delegates critical of Mapai's lackluster reaction to the German crisis, Katznelson cried,
"It
is not our fault that we did not come to the Congress with proposals. Zionism fell into a terrible disaster. Our movement is purely a movement of liberty. Now that it has been stained with blood, we cannot proceed with constructive labors ....
If
you had read ... [news of the Arlosoroff murder] in the press of Eretz Yisrael ... which arrived here today, then you would understand this Congress cannot do anything, until it has been freed from this disgrace."
²⁸

Revisionist hecklers shouted out, "Then why did you convene the Congress?" Katznelson shot back,
"That's
why we convened it. You thought you could playa double game. You act like you don't know anything [about the Arlosoroff murder], but others came and revealed it."
²⁹

At this point, Grossman, seeking to remind the audience about the Transfer Agreement, yelled in Yiddish, "How does it go with your
business?"
The word business was uttered by Grossman not in Yiddish, but in English with a hostile inflection.
³⁰

Katznelson, hearing this, attacked Grossman for insisting on interpellations about the Transfer Agreement while refusing to discuss the Arlosoroff issue. "I admire the equanimity of Grossman," Katznelson said sarcastically. "He's got time and he can remain in silence [on Arlosoroff]. But there are things which don't let him rest [such as the Transfer Agreement], and which he demands should be dealt with immediately at the Congress. This he demands, when the matter can be brought forward to the press. But he, the man of the Democratic Revisionists, remains silent when every day things are published [about the Arlosoroff case] which bring only shame ... to our movement." Hitting hard with the murder accusation, Katznelson cried, "Only one of us has been slaughtered so far. Nobody can guarantee that tomorrow a second will not fall .... Therefore the first
business
of the Congress is to liberate Zionism from this right now!" Like Grossman, Katz-nelson broke from Yiddish to speak the word "business" in English and with an equally if not more demonstratively hostile tone.
³¹

This is how it went. Hour after hour, night after night. The crisis in Germany was omitted from the agenda. The menace of Hitlerism was bypassed. The Nazis must have been smiling.

By Wednesday morning, August
30,
Political Committee members had slept a night on the subject of the Transfer Agreement. Some convinced members became uncertain; some uncertain ones became convinced. Hence, there was still no unanimity when the Political Committee convened its second meeting that morning.

The session opened with a background talk by Professor Selig Brodetsky, who had been deeply involved in the transfer negotiations. He explained how the Zionist Organization had taken decisive steps early on in response to the rise of Hitler. Information was obtained through British government channels, and Neville Laski of the Board of Deputies and Leonard Montefiore of the Anglo-Jewish Association were influenced to avoid an "open struggle against the Third Reich." This was done to keep the lines of communication open between the Zionist Organization and Berlin. The Transfer Agreement had obviously created great dissatisfaction throughout the Jewish world, Brodetsky conceded, but he insisted the agreement was needed if German Jewish emigration was to be organized.
³²

Professor Brodetsky's comments, however, gave Stephen Wise no satisfaction. Wise demanded to know how Nazi propagandists could be prevented from seizing upon the Transfer Agreement to discredit the entire anti-Hitler boycott movement. Brodetsky could not provide a sensible answer.
³³

Mindful of Untermyer's ultimatum that the Congress either disown the Transfer Agreement or suffer the recall of the American delegation, Wise laid down an ultimatum of his own. Either the Political Committee clarify how the Transfer Agreement was
not
a gross breach of the boycott, or Wise would issue a statement on behalf of the entire American delegation condemning the agreement. Such a move would almost certainly trigger the recall Untermyer had promised. Transfer advocates heatedly protested, but Wise insisted he would take public action unless the committee did as he demanded.
³⁴

Recriminations and threats continued throughout the day as the Political Committee struggled to resolve the transfer controversy.
³⁵
No progress was made, but by meeting's end it had become clear that Mapai's grasp on the Congress-when it came to the transfer question-was indeed weakening. There was now the clear possibility that the unpredictable Congress delegates could be swayed against the agreement. To that end, the Revisionists began planning a minority resolution calling upon the full Congress to repudiate the Transfer Agreement and forbid any future pacts with Germany.

True, the Revisionists' earlier minority boycott resolution had been a total failure, but during that fight, they'd had Stephen Wise working
against
them. The Revisionists could now count on a dismayed and angry public and the support of Stephen Wise to give their resolution at least a chance.

The Wednesday August 30 Political Committee adjourned just in time for the members to reach the main hall to attend the last session of open debate. The Revisionists were ready to make transfer the big issue. No Revisionists were scheduled to speak that night, but when Berl Locker came to the dais, the Revisionists were ready.

Locker was trying to improve Mapai's image of being too preoccupied with factional feuding to have responded properly to the Hitler crisis. Therefore, much of his speech was devoted to a compassionate reading of the German Jewish tragedy and Mapai's reaction to it. "I know that immediately, when the first news about events in Germany arrived," Locker said in a dramatic voice, "every Zionist and also every Jew asked himself how is it possible to get out as many Jews as possible from Germany and how can they be brought to Eretz Yisrael." At this, the Revisionists in the audience burst into conspicuous laughter, with several shouting, "Through an agreement!"
³⁶

Instantly, Locker stopped to answer the hecklers, declaring,
"If
I am not wrong, and I am sure that I am not, two days before the murder of Arlosoroff, an article appeared against Arlosoroff because of his position on the question of German Jewry, and in the same paper Jabotinsky wrote that it is possible [for the Revisionists] to come to an agreement with Hitler."
³⁷

"False quotations! False quotations!" shouted Jabotinsky's supporters.

"False quotations?" Locker answered. "It won't help you anything if you call these quotations false. I assure you, such things were written." Believing the interference to be over, Locker proceeded with his address. But the Revisionists continued to heckle, shouting out "certificates," in castigation of Mapai's decision to force an immigration certificate priority for their own halutzim even over the German Jews themselves. Locker continued, "I can only say to the people that call out the word 'certificate,' that you have a comfortable point of view [not being responsible for quota negotiations with the British as Mapai people were]. When we succeed in obtaining a big number of certificates, then you like it. But when the government only gives us a few, then who is guilty-the Zionist Executive, Weizmann and Mapai?" Revisionist hecklers answered the question: "The [socialist] internationale!"
³⁸

The scorn and skirmishing continued until late that evening. Once again, nothing was accomplished. But just as Mapai had been able to block the Revisionists from rallying the delegates to oppose the Transfer Agreement, so had the Revisionists been successful in preventing a successful purge of their party from the Zionist structure.

Mapai understood that it was losing its war to destroy the Revisionists. Just after the session adjourned, Mapai leaders convened an all-night emergency session of the Actions Committee to plan their strategy for ultimate victory.
³⁹
The big push would come the next day.

T
HROUGHOUT
the Congress, a special Commission on Palestinian Terrorism was the scene of venomous attempts by Mapai to link the entire Revisionist party to the assassination of ArlosorotI. The Revisionists, as minority members of the commission, had blocked any unanimous recommendations to the Congress as a whole. But Mapai had finally succeeded in scheduling a special session exclusively devoted to the question of violence. That session was Thursday, August 31. The expected climax had attracted hundreds of additional spectators and journalists who jammed the delegate benches and visitor galleries. Squads of Prague policemen were stationed throughout the hall in anticipation of fighting.
¹

Mapai's majority resolution was virtually an enabling act permitting Mapai to indict and expel Revisionism. The resolution instructed the Actions Committee to convene
after
the Congress adjourned and the delegates left Prague. A special panel would be established to conduct an investigation in Palestine. The Actions Committee was then empowered "in the most effective manner ... to remove from the Zionist Organization those elements which are responsible [for violence]."
²

Chairman Motzkin read the resolution to the delegates, adding that there would be no discussion. Jabotinsky jumped to his feet demanding a ,debate with speeches limited to three minutes. He promised that the Revisionists would be courteous and careful. Motzkin asked if Jabotinsky would agree to the presidium reviewing his statement in advance and censoring any comments they did not approve. "Never," he shouted. "We don't accept censorship!" He pleaded with the delegates not to "tolerate a procedure which makes caricatures" of Zionist democracy. But unable to do better, Jabotinsky finally agreed to read an edited declaration that welcomed an investigation, so long as it also probed the class warfare of Mapai that he said created such crises.
³

Several futile, angry Revisionist delays followed, but when it was over,
179
over
62
voted to establish the investigative panel. When the Revisionists tried to offer their own minority resolution, it was ruled out of order. Jabotinsky desperately pleaded to come to the dais and make a statement of defense as a Jew speaking to other Jews. He was denied. "Justice is dead!" the Revisionists screamed. "Lie! Lie!" others shouted. "Judicial murder!" they wailed. A fracas ensued. The door to exile had been opened. The Revisionists would exit through it, but only fighting. Chaos continued for fifteen minutes, but that did not change the vote.
⁴

During the last week of August, the Reich continued its propaganda war, releasing more leaks about negotiations between Germany and Zionism. The Zionist hierarchy stuck by their defense: The Transfer Agreement was nothing more than a private deal engineered by a private citizen named Sam Cohen and supervised by a private financial institution, the Anglo-Palestine Bank. This story sufficed for a few days as international Jewish furor became diluted by the continuing confusion. Moreover, the more spectacular orange deal disclosures were so impossible to verify that many dismissed it as just another Nazi fabrication designed to divide Jewish solidarity.
⁵

But on August
31,
the Reich inflamed the entire subject again by leaking to the Berlin press the complete text of the Transfer Agreement—decree
54/33,
dated August
28, 1933.
In sterile bureaucratic language, the published text clearly explained to the world that the ZVfD was officially involved and that Palestine had been given an exclusive Jewish assets transfer privilege.
⁶
The ZVfD, under the circumstances, was forced to confirm the Reich decree. So newspapers in Europe and America reported that the Transfer Agreement between official Zionist institutions and the Third Reich was now corroborated.
⁷
As if deliberately to mix the orange deal and the Transfer Agreement in the public mind, that same August 31
the Fruit Department of the Landhandelsbund announced that the Jaffa orange pact was now sealed following negotiations with two major Palestinian cooperatives under the aegis of George Halperin, an official of the Anglo-Palestine Bank.
⁸

All the subdued rage was rekindled. Jews throughout the world unleashed a barrage of protest. The Warsaw Jewish Community sent Prague an immediate condemnation. The Jewish War Veterans in New York wired to Chairman Motzkin notice of JWV resolutions denouncing the Transfer Agreement, the orange deal, and any other negotiations between Zionism and Hitler's Germany.
⁹
London's
Jewish Chronicle,
reflecting Anglo-Jewry's shock and disbelief, actually reprinted the text of the Transfer Agreement as a joke with the following preface: ''And what a decree! The first section is headed 'Transfer of Property to Palestine' ... and it must be read in full for its rich humour to be appreciated."
¹⁰
Unfortunately, it was no joke. Every word released in the Berlin papers and reprinted in the
Jewish Chronicle corresponded to the actual text of decree 54/33. By September 2
in the shadow of the latest disclosures, even some of the staunchest transfer advocates in Prague were changing their minds.