Dan

Meanwhile, the German Zionist Federation did something quite the opposite:  they sent Hitler congratulations, and a proposal for a joint solution to the “Jewish question” in the Reich.  The letter said the Jews and Nazis shared the belief in cultural purity, “…we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses in the cultural domain”.  

“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 …”   then down to business:

“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 …”

The Zionist’s appeal was effective. That summer they, and the Jewish Agency for Palestine negotiated a deal with the German Economics Ministry.   The Germans would permit any Jews that would emigrate to Palestine to take most of their wealth with them. 

The way it worked was this: an emigrating Jew would liquidate his assets into a cash amount.  This he would deposit with the Zionist Haavara company, who in turn would purchase German goods with it, and when the Jew got to Palestine, the amount of his deposit would be waiting in the Zionist bank in Tel Aviv.   This was called the Transfer Agreement, or Ha’avarah.   

The agreement was signed by Chaim Arlosoroff, Political Secretary of the Jewish Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist Organization.

The SS liked the idea. The Das Schwarze Korps newspaper gave it’s endorsement to 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.”

Hitler wasn’t so enthusiastic about the Zionists by 1941.  Following is a quote from ‘HItler’s Table Talk’ *

“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”.

Hitler’s cynicism on the topic years after the Transfer Agreement deployed may have been due to results that turned out to be a lot less dramatic than the Biblical Exodus from Pharaoh.  It turned out German Jews didn’t want to move to Palestine.

In all, between 1933 and 1936 only 60,000 German Jews had taken advantage of it.   Nearly every bio of notable Jews who left Germany during the 30′s says they ‘fled’ to Paris, or Zurich, or London and New York.  

I have not been able to find out of if Jews who were financially destitute were able to emigrate to Palestine.  I doubt it.

It cost money to take advantage of Ha’avarah.  You had to pay 1,000 pounds sterling to the Haavara company up front, and the Nazis also took around 20% of your liquidated gross assets.   

By 1940 the war made it impossible for anybody to leave Germany.  By then the SS had begun the policy of total confiscation of individual Jewish assets and “deportation to the East”.

On this, Hitler said at dinner with Himmler in 1941, “It’s not a bad idea, by the way, that public rumour attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews. Terror is a salutary thing.  The attempt to create a Jewish state will be a failure”.

*HItler’s Table Talk, ISBN-10: 1929631057
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Table_Talk