The Transfer Agreement (61 page)

He quickly turned to the boycott's biggest obstacle—Jewish leaders. First, the American Jewish Committee: "A mere handful in number, but
powerful in influence, of our own thoughtless but doubtless well-intentioned Jews seem obsessed and frightened at the bare mention of the word
boycott
.
It signifies and conjures up to them images of force and illegality, such as have on occasions in the past characterized struggles between labor unions and their employers. As these timid souls are capitalists and employers, the word and all that it implies is hateful to their ears.
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"These gentlemen do not know what they are talking or thinking about. Instead of surrendering to their vague fears and half-baked ideas, our first duty is to educate them . . . [that] the boycott is our only really effective weapon .... What then have these amiable gentlemen accomplished or expect to accomplish ... by their 'feather-duster' methods. You cannot put out a fire ... by just looking on until the mad flames, fanned by the wind of hate, have destroyed everything. What we are proposing and have already gone far toward doing, is to prosecute a purely defensive economic boycott that will undermine the Hitler regime ... by destroying their export trade on which their very existence depends."
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Untermyer then turned to the Congress and Stephen Wise: "I purposely refrain from including the American Jewish Congress in this appeal because I am satisfied that ninety-five percent of their members are already with us and that they are being misrepresented by two or three men now abroad .... I ask that prior to the [World Jewish Conference preparatory] meeting to be held this month in Prague. . . they instruct these false leaders in no uncertain terms as to the stand they must take ... or resign their offices. One of them, generally recognized as the kingpin of mischief-makers, is junketing around the Continent engaged in his favorite pastime of spreading discord, asserting at one time and place that he favors and supports the boycott, and at another that he is opposed or indifferent to it, all dependent on the audience he is addressing.''
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With the nation listening, Untermyer explained how the whole world had already made "surprising and gratifying progress" in the economic war against Nazism. It was the United States and England that were the most "inadequately organized." He admitted, "With us in America, the delay has been in part due to lack of funds and the vast territory to be covered, but it is hoped that this condition will soon be corrected. The object lesson we are determined to teach is so priceless to all humanity that we dare not fail.
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"Each of you, Jew and gentile alike, who has not already enlisted in the sacred war should do so now ....
It
is not sufficient that you buy no goods made in Germany. You must refuse to deal with any merchant or shopkeeper who sells any German-made goods or who patronizes German ships .... To our shame ... there are a few Jews among us, but fortunately only a few, so wanting in dignity and self-respect that they . . . travel on German ships where they are despised .... Their names should be heralded far and wide. They are traitors to their race.
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"In conclusion . . . with your support and that of our millions of non-Jewish friends, we will drive the last nail in the coffin of bigotry and fanaticism that has dared raise its ugly head to disgrace twentieth-century civilization."
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In his sermon from the studio, Samuel Untermyer rightly expected the Jews of America to cast off their old leadership and join his defiant crusade.

The next morning, August 7, Untermyer received a phone call from an indignant Bernard Deutsch, president of the American Jewish Congress. Deutsch explicitly condemned the radio speech as a vicious attack against Wise. Exactly how Untermyer answered is unknown, but the spunky boycott leader must have certainly prevailed. That afternoon, a special four-man Congress delegation conferred with Untermyer about joining his movement.
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Untermyer varied little from his broadcast. He welcomed their cooperation. A Congress fund-raising campaign must
be
launched in concert with the American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights, which was the American alter ego of the World Jewish Economic Federation. These funds were desperately needed to spread the boycott to the American interior, where
it
was strong but
far
from complete. Untermyer was unyielding that Wise be instructed without further delay to announce the Congress in favor of the boycott.
³³

Immediately after the Congress delegation left Untermyer, they cabled Wise in Europe urging him, in view of enormous public pressure, finally to declare himself in favor. The cablegram also made clear that the Congress intended to join forces with Untermyer's group. The decision would
be
ratified on August 17 and announced to the public in an Executive Committee session on August 20.
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That morning, August 7, Congress leaders and Samuel Untermyer in New York had every reason to believe a successful boycott alliance was soon to be consummated that would bring down the German economy. They had no way of knowing that even as they were solidifying their plans, a group of Zionist leaders and Mr. Sam Cohen were meeting in Berlin with the German government to seal the Transfer Agreement, thus creating not an economic boycott but an economic bond between Germany and Palestine.

Stephen Wise was not pleased when he received the Congress' August 7 cablegram. He had worked political miracles to achieve his moment in Geneva, but the Amsterdam gathering had obviated the need for any World Jewish Congress meeting to plan or declare a global boycott. Untermyer had already done it.

And now, while Wise was still in Europe, his power base in America was on the brink of merging with Untermyer's essentially nonexistent organization. This was a threat to everything. In Wise's view, Untermyer's Federation
would not only dilute anti-Nazi boycott resources, it would create the worldwide entity Wise himself was hoping to establish.

The Congress' cable heralded nothing less than the triumph of Samuel
Untermyer and the dethroning of Stephen Wise. Wise wired back:
UNANIMOUS DECISION GENEVA CONFERENCE SEPTEMBER FIFTH ESSENTIAL ... DECISION ALMOST CERTAIN FAVOR PUBLIC BOYCOTT BUT MUST [BE] SOLEMNLY ... PROCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL JEWISH AUSPICES GENEVA STOP SUGGEST YOUR RESOLUTION [AUGUST] 17 AUTHORIZE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES GENEVA PROPOSE BOYCOTT RESOLUTION ... UNTERMYER AMSTERDAM FIASCO EVERYWHERE DISCREDITED MELCHETT DECLINED CHAIRMANSHIP URGE POSTPONE DECISION CONCERNING COOP-ERATION TILL GENEVA.
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His message: a boycott resolution now would undermine the Second World Jewish Conference. Joining forces with Untermyer, who represented no one and was not worthy to lead the boycott, would also undermine the Conference.
In
other words, continue doing nothing.

Wise saw no value in helping Untermyer in the struggle against Hitler. The show would have to go on in Geneva. And as far as Wise was concerned, it would have to be a one-man show.

Stephen Wise was now careful to retain the support of the American Jewish Congress. On August 14, a few days after receiving the demand to declare for the boycott, Rabbi Wise did just that. In a speech to the Prague Jewish Community, Wise stated publicly, "Decent, self-respecting Jews cannot deal with Germany in any way, buy or sell or maintain . . . commerce with Germany or travel on German boats." And he promised that a preparatory commission meeting the next day would make vital decisions to be implemented at the Second World Jewish Conference in Geneva on September 5.
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When word reached New York of Rabbi Wise's boycott declaration, reporters contacted Untermyer for comment. With restraint aimed at a strategic union with Wise's forces, Untermyer issued a one-sentence statement: "I am pleased to learn that at last Rabbi Wise has definitely come out in favor of the boycott."
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The next day, August
15,
the World Jewish Congress' preparatory commission met in Prague. Wise told the commission that the Second World Jewish Conference would almost certainly make the global boycott official.
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Whereas Untermyer's World Jewish Economic Federation envisioned grandiose plans for rerouting commerce around Germany, it lacked the branch offices, the postage, the telegraph accounts, the mimeographs, the phones, the sheer manpower possessed by the member organizations of the emerging World Jewish Congress. Only Wise's boycott machinery could wield the global network needed to cripple the Third Reich.

Responding to enormous public pressure, American Jewish Congress officers felt compelled to ignore Stephen Wise's request not to pass a boycott resolution. At the Congress' August 17 Administrative meeting, many members felt unable to remain publicly silent any longer. After a long, discordant debate, Dr. Samuel Margoshes proffered a compromise resolution authorizing Stephen Wise to vote at Geneva in favor of boycott. But it also directed the Congress' Executive Committee to announce on August
20
that it was finally ready "to cooperate with all Jewish agencies now engaged in ... the boycott movement, [so] ... a consolidated boycott organization may ... enlist the support of the Jewish as well as the non-Jewish population of America."
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A majority voted for Margoshes' resolution.
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After consideration, Untermyer agreed to the compromise, subordinating to Wise's World Jewish Congress. Untermyer's movement, imbued with fight but devoid of organization, would now have to wait until early September, when the Geneva Conference would declare a worldwide boycott. It would be Wise's way. Yet Untermyer, even though surpassed, had succeeded. He had forced the American Jewish Congress to commit to a boycott without further delay. Of course, each day was precious if a winter triumph was to be won, but Untermyer knew he could not create his own national and worldwide infrastructure during the few weeks he would wait to join his movement to the Stephen Wise-built organization.

There would now be no turning back. In a little more than forty-eight hours, the American Jewish Congress, the world's largest Jewish confederation, representing hundreds of thousands of American Jews, speaking for 25 percent of all the Jews in the world, comprising hundreds of Jewish men's clubs, sisterhoods, neighborhood groups, labor associations, and synagogue congregations, would finally join the economic war against Adolf Hitler.

Almost none of the reporters who showed up Sunday morning, August 20,
knew why the Congress Executive had called an emergency session. Dr. Joseph Tenenbaum, chairman of the Executive Committee, had announced the meeting in a press release the night before, but carefully avoided any reference to boycott.
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Nevertheless, the conference room at the New Yorker Hotel was crowded with reporters and Congress leaders.

Bernard Deutsch began almost routinely, calling for an emergency program to assist German Jews. But then Deutsch shocked the audience by declaring that the last element of the program would be full implementation of the anti-Nazi boycott in America.
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Congress officials explained that they had waited this long clinging to hopes that President Roosevelt would publicly condemn Nazism, as the leaders of other nations had. Deutsch and Wise had used every private channel to induce Roosevelt to speak out, but the president would do nothing to help. He would not even lift artificially tightened procedures that were each day
denying visas to desperate Gennan Jews applying at the U.S. consulates in Germany. These visa refusals were occurring even as other nations had opened their arms to thousands of refugees. The result was a miserable and overcrowded refugee situation in Europe that the United States refused to help alleviate.
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"The American public may rightfully ask," said a frustrated Deutsch, "why the United States government continues to maintain diplomatic silence in relation to a country whose treatment of its nationals betrays every humane instinct, and where Americans are repeatedly assaulted, arrested, and forcibly detained; where American firms are ordered to dismiss their Jewish employees; ... and whose government has the temerity to send paid political propagandists into the United States to spread racial hatred and bigotry."
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It
was incomprehensible, Deutsch said, that the United States had long ago severed commercial relations with Russia and had still not granted the Soviet Union diplomatic recognition—this to protest Russia's abuse of her citizens and her refusal to abide by international accords. Yet economic and political relations continued to thrive with Germany.
Why,
demanded Deutsch forcefully, were
communist
agitators being deported from the United States when "every steamer arriving from Germany brings new propagandists, Nazi cells."
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When Dr. Tenenbaum took over the podium, he continued the theme. "We do not know," said Tenenbaum, "who bears the responsibility for persuading the president ... to yield his native impulse of magnanimity and sense of justice .... While the people, the leaders of thought and science in this country, and the leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives have allied themselves in protest against the atrocities and inhumanities ... the administration has singly failed in its duty."
⁴⁶

Tenenbaum, who had researched the legality of international boycott action, defended the anti-Nazi campaign as an obligation of civilization inherent in the League of Nations charter. "Every people," Tenenbaum declared, "has a right, nay a duty, to refuse to support the economic structure of a country which threatens its life and property—there can be no greater moral justification for taking such an extreme step."
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