From the late 19th century to the first quarter of the 20th century, Jewish emigration from Germany ceased after their circumstances improved and they gained full equality before the law. They played a role in the economic movement and integrated into society. When World War I broke out, more than 100,000 Jewish soldiers served their country in Germany, of whom 12,000 were killed. The majority of German Jews were content with their Jewish identity and maintained unwavering loyalty to Germany.
However, Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, was convinced that the solution to the persecution of Jews worldwide lay in transforming them into a colonial power like other European nations and establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Consequently, it was necessary to deal with those who opposed his idea through exile or extermination. In December 1909, after Herzl’s death, the German Jewish Congress convened. Some participants expressed their objection to the establishment of a state in Palestine.
Anti-Zionism continued to dominate the majority of Jewish communities throughout Germany until the 1930s, while Zionist leaders persisted in their faltering efforts to promote their plan for mass Jewish immigration. By 1929, the membership of the Zionist Organization had declined from 200,000 to 50,000. The situation in Palestine became increasingly difficult for Zionist Jewish immigration from 1926 to 1933. With the rise of Hitler’s regime in 1933, Zionists feared that escalating persecution of Jews would force them to emigrate from Palestine, especially given the existence of agencies in the United States that had already drawn up plans to resettle them in South America.
Therefore, a drastic and controversial course of action was decided upon. German Zionists signed an agreement with the Nazi authorities, allowing some wealthy Jews to immigrate to Palestine in exchange for money. Even after the Balfour Declaration of 1917, British authorities restricted Jewish immigration, and Jews found it difficult to acquire sufficient land. Jews were only able to purchase less than two percent of the land in Palestine.
Contrary to popular belief, Hitler’s rise to power presented a golden opportunity to bolster Jewish immigration to Palestine, a fact that far outweighed all Zionist propaganda. Antisemitism was a powerful force, which Zionism exploited like boiling water to generate energy. However, they overlooked, perhaps deliberately, the fate of the rest of Europe’s Jews, who faced marginalization, attacks, and murder. This was especially true since the Zionists wanted only the best and brightest young people in Palestine, not children. They considered the remaining millions of Jews mere dust in the wind, destined to disappear.
In reality, the Zionists and the Nazis shared similar ideologies. Both aimed to build an ethnocentric nation-state based on racial purity, a concept widely embraced at the time. Both Zionists and Nazis vehemently opposed the assimilation of Jews in Europe, as Zionism demanded racial purity. Unlike the German Zionists, who collaborated with the Nazis, most European Jews resisted the fascists, fighting them in Spain and Poland. The Zionists did everything in their power to thwart these efforts. As a result, many Jews lost their lives due to this policy, which sought to deny European Jews any safe havens other than Palestine.
Even as late as 1943, when the Holocaust was at its peak, the Zionists continued to prevent Jews from settling outside of Palestine. When a large group of rabbis in Washington attempted to meet with the president to urge him to save European Jews, the Zionist leaders asked the president to refuse to meet with them, and he did. In April 1944, during the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann offered the Zionists a deal - he would spare the lives of one million Hungarian Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks and supplies from the Allies. The proposal was not accepted, as their focus was on Jewish emigration to Palestine, with no regard for the fate of a million Jews.
Eichmann also proposed to the Zionist leader Rezső Kasztner, that he would pay $1,000 for the release of 1,684 wealthy Jews, including the Kastner family, in exchange for their escape to Switzerland and that Kasztner was to agree not to inform Hungarian Jews that they were to be sent to their deaths in the Holocaust. As a result, Kasztner was convicted in 1954 and assassinated in March 1957 by members of a far-right militia for collaborating with the Nazis. In effect, the Zionist-Nazi alliance became part of the ideological foundation of Israel’s apartheid and genocidal policies today.
By Ahmad alsarraf
email: [email protected]
email: [email protected]
