I recently received the following comment on a post about the collaboration between the father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Muslim Brotherhood (i.e. from which Hamas originated), and the Nazis:
Perhaps this user was unaware that I already have at least two or three older posts addressing this so-called “agreement,” known as the Haavara Agreement.
To supplement this post, I recommend the following posts:
- Final Solution, Rebranded
- The Zionists and the Nazis
- Palestine and the Holocaust
- Enough Holocaust Inversion
- Even More Holocaust Inversion
THE HAAVARA AGREEMENT
Immediately following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the Nazis wasted no time in passing antisemitic legislation, including a boycott of Jewish businesses, and, between 1933-1938, a process known as “voluntary Aryanization” (which later became “mandatory Aryanization”) transferred Jewish businesses and assets to Germans. German Jews became increasingly desperate to flee, but no countries wanted to take in Jewish refugees, and this economic marginalization made emigration virtually impossible.
In 1933, Eliezer Hoofein, the director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, and the Reich Economics Ministry negotiated the Haavara Agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Jews fleeing persecution in Germany could use their assets to purchase German goods for export, thus salvaging their assets and facilitating emigration to Palestine under the immigrant investor visa, in spite of severe British antisemitic immigration restriction policies.
Even so, the Haavara Agreement was met with staunch opposition, both among Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews. In response to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, Jews worldwide enacted a boycott on German goods themselves. The Haavara Agreement was not in line with the Jewish anti-German boycott, as the Jewish community in both Germany and Palestine would be purchasing German goods. German public opinion also opposed the agreement. The Haavara Agreement was dissolved after World War II broke out in 1939.
The Haavara Agreement, though deeply controversial, ultimately saved the lives of some 60,000 German Jews. For context, the Haavara Agreement was similar to making a hostage deal with Hamas…making a deal with a hostile, genocidal enemy to save the lives of your own people. It wasn’t Zionist-Nazi “collaboration” by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, in dozens of foreign policy documents, the Nazis themselves clarified that the Haavara Agreement should not be confused with Nazi support for Zionism or a Jewish state.
NAZI COMMENTS ON ZIONISM
(1) August 13, 1920 Adolf Hitler speech, titled “Why We Are Antisemites,” delivered to a cheering crowd of 2000 at the Hofbräuhaus am Platzl in Munich.
“And so we can now understand why the whole Zionist state and its establishing is nothing but a comedy. Herr Chief Rabbi has now said in Jerusalem: ‘Establishment of this state is not the most important; it is far from certain if it will at all be possible.’ However, it is necessary that Jewry has this city as its spiritual headquarters because Jewry ‘materially and in fact are the masters of several states; we control them financially, economically and politically.’ And so the Zionist state is going to be a harmless corn of sand in the eye. Efforts are made to explain that so and so many Jews have been found that want to go there as farmers, workers, even soldiers.”
[Crowd interrupts with laughter]
“If these people really have this urge in themselves, Germany today needs these ideal men as turf cutters and coal miners; they could take part in building our water power plants, our lakes etc. but it does not occur to them. The whole Zionist state will be nothing else than the perfect high school for their international criminals, and from there they will be directed. And every Jew will, of course, have immunity as a citizen of the Palestinian state--”
[Crowd laughs again]
“-- and he will of course keep our citizenship. But when caught red-handed, he will not be a German Jew any longer but a citizen of Palestine.”
(2) Adolf Hitler’s infamous 1925 Manifesto, Mein Kampf.
“For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.”
(3) Top secret telegram written by the Nazi Germany Foreign Minister to the German Embassy in Great Britain, the German Consulate General in Jerusalem, and the German Legation in Iraq. June 1, 1937.
“The formation of a Jewish state or a Jewish-led political structure under British mandate is not in Germany’s interest, since a Palestinian state would not absorb world Jewry but would create an additional position of power under international law for international Jewry, somewhat like the Vatican State for political Catholicism or Moscow for the Comintern.
Germany therefore has an interest in strengthening the Arab world as a counterweight against such a possible increase in power for world Jewry.”
(4) Addendum to the previous telegram for the German Embassy in Great Britain. June 1, 1937.
“Therefore, please indicate to the Government there when occasion offers that Germany is also interested in developments in Palestine. Although Germany has hitherto aided the emigration of Jews of German citizenship to Palestine as much as possible, it is incorrect to assume that Germany would also welcome the formation of a political structure more or less under Jewish leadership in Palestine. We do not believe that the efforts to tranquilize the international situation would be aided by the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine.”
[You can find dozens of other official Nazi documents from 1937 expressing the same sentiments in “Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945,” available on Google Books]
(5) Adolf Hitler to the father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin al-Husseini. November 28, 1941.
“Germany is resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time to direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.”
DEBUNKING OUT-OF-CONTEXT PROPAGANDA
This is one of the most widely-shared photos among anti-Israel propagandists. Ironically, the photo comes from the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, and it’s usually presented out-of-context.
The real context is this: these are Haganah soldiers sometime around April of 1948, after capturing the Katamon neighborhood in South Jerusalem from the Jordanian Arab Legion and the Palestinian Arab militias. The Nazi flags in the photo were seized from either Arab homes or the German Templar Colony in Jerusalem.
The coin below is often also presented as “evidence” of Zionist-Nazi collaboration. In reality, the coin was not Zionist-made, but rather, a cynical piece of Nazi propaganda.
As Holocaust and antisemitism historian Paul Bogdanor explains, “The image shows a coin struck by the Nazis in the 1930s to mark a series of articles published in the newspaper Der Angriff about a trip to Palestine by one of their agents. It was created by the Nazis to pretend that they wanted an ‘honorable’ solution to the ‘Jewish Question’ via the transfer agreement [Haavara Agreement], which the Nazis later abandoned. The coin was of course pure Nazi propaganda, like a rapist pretending to sympathize with his victim. [Those using the image to discredit Zionism are] unscrupulously repeating Nazi propaganda.”
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