The Transfer Agreement (69 page)

The boycott champion told B'nai B'rith that he well understood the reasoning of many Prague delegates. "[They] had been warned
if
they voted for a boycott, the absurd abortive negotiations ... to permit German Jews to be taken out of Germany would be terminated." Untermyer declared that he wished the negotiations
would
be terminated, because
"It
is playing into the hands of the enemy, and destroying the only opportunity ... to liberate their victims by bringing about the certain economic downfall of the Hitler regime.".
⁷

Summoning Jews and non-Jews everywhere to resist the idea of the Transfer Agreement, Untermyer ended his say with these words: "It is simply inconceivable that we should ever become parties to such an unholy compact."
⁸

It was clear to Nazi party leaders that dissident Zionist elements might override the relationship Germany had forged with the Zionist Organization. So, on August 27, more leaks ran in the Berlin press. This time, though, the items were not on the Transfer Agreement per se, but one of the purely commercial undertakings between Palestine and Germany. The subject was oranges.

Germany not only held the power over Jewish Palestine's future growth, Germany held the power over Jewish Palestine's very existence. The bulk of the Jewish Palestinian economy was based on just one factor: citrus exports, accounting for about
80
percent of exports and almost as much of the gross national product. Great Britain was the leading purchaser. The second largest customer was Germany. Third Reich importers accounted for roughly
19
percent of the Palestine crop and in
1933
were expected to increase their buying substantially as crop yields grew. Without an utterly successful orange sale for the
1933-34
season, the Palestinian economy would be undermined overnight.
⁹

Palestine did not thrive on a mixed economy. Its so-called factories were generally no more than workshops. Its second most important product was soap, representing just a few percent of its gross national product.
¹⁰
Moreover, oranges lived by their own clock. They had to be picked, processed, packed, shipped, distributed, and sold on a very tight schedule. Delaying any leg of the journey just a few weeks could devastate the entire crop.

Palestine's 1932 orange crop was 4.3 million cases--roughly a million cases more than the 1931 harvest. In mid-I933 most experts were expecting the coming season to yield more than 6 million crates. Fruit brokers declared Palestine was "drowning in fruit." And yet the world was in a state of depression. Foreign currency in Germany had been curtailed for most nonessential imports. What's more, Spanish oranges were threatening to dangerously undersell Palestinian Jaffas.
¹¹

Nothing could have been easier for Germany than to disallow Palestinian orange imports. The result would have been sudden, perhaps insurmountable, economic disaster for Palestine. But Germany had several reasons for wanting Palestine's orange trade to flourish. For one, if Palestine was to be the receptacle for Germany's Jews, it would need to be viable. Purchasing Jaffas was therefore as essential to Nazi planning as solving the Jewish question. In fact, to a large extent, purchasing Jaffas
was
solving the Jewish question. What's more, a continuing German purchasing power in Palestine was the greatest motive for the Zionist movement to abstain from the boycott.
If
Germany could not sell her exports, there would be no money to purchase 15 percent or more of the 1933-34 citrus crop.

Furthermore, in view of the expected hardships, all food questions in Germany had been commandeered by both the Reich Ministry for Food and the Nazi party's department for agrarian trade, known as the Land-handelsbund. Wholly apart from the transfer contacts, negotiations had been under way for some months between the Landhandelsbund, German Zionists, and Palestinian citrus brokers.
¹²
Germany wanted to buy extra oranges, but could not find the foreign currency.

On August 27, the Berliner
Tageblatt
led the German press in leaking the story: A massive agreement was nearing completion. The Landhandelsbund would take about RM
10
million in Palestinian citrus from the coming crop; in return Palestine would take double, perhaps triple that amount in German products. No cash was involved; it was a straight barter. All goods and produce would be shipped on German vessels.
¹³

Jews were confused and provoked by the emotionally charged, still hazy Transfer Agreement. But this clearly understandable mutual trade pact between Palestine and Germany ignited the Jewish and even the non-Jewish community to almost universal outrage against the whole question of Zionist dealings with the Hitler regime. Quickly dubbed the "Golden Orange," the revelations suddenly focused the issue clearly in almost everybody's mind. Palestine and Germany were business partners.

At first, the orange deal was not believed. London papers only skeptically picked up the story for their August 27 late-Sunday editions. Scores of angry citizens immediately called Zionist Organization headquarters in London demanding information. When the Zionist Organization denied all knowledge of the orange barter, people turned to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency for details. The JTA, however, could provide little more than what it reprinted from the Berlin papers.
¹⁴

Astonished correspondents from the major newspapers and wire services in London and Palestine also tried in vain to verify the report. No one knew anything. In Prague, Zionist leaders issued only emphatic disclaimers that whatever this supposed orange agreement was or wasn't, it was wholly unrelated to the Transfer Agreement.
¹⁵

Boycotters were trying to make Germany starve that winter. They could not believe that Palestine would stymie this effort so near success with a food barter for a cashless Reich. British boycott champion Captain Webber was quick to issue a statement of disbelief: "The chief purpose of the German Land Trade League [Landhandelsbund] is to throw ridicule upon the Jewish boycott. Last week I heard a rumor that the Land Trade League was endeavoring to launch something of this kind and personally received assurance from the Zionist Organization that there was nothing whatever in it. Any agreement between Germany and Palestine is naturally an agreement between Germany and Jews; therefore the Zionist Organization would be the first to hear about it. I feel sure that tonight's report has no foundation in fact. I consider it an attempt to belittle us, particularly in the eyes of the United States."
¹⁶

Everything was getting confused. The Transfer Agreement ... the barter deal. Surely they were part of the same arrangement? Or were they? The media, the diplomatic community, the world's Jews, the Zionist movement-they were all understandably mixing apples and oranges in comprehending the two agreements. Answers were demanded. Attention focused on the Monday night August
28
plenary session. Not only was Grossman's inter-pellation due to be answered, but the delegates were scheduled to debate Arlosoroff murder allegations openly. Delegate emotion was clearly keyed up, and the debate promised to be explosive. Congress organizers could not allow the confrontation.

So the session was simply canceled.
¹⁷

Lacking any credible rebuttals to orange deal reports, hesitant American, European and Palestinian journalists filed dispatches. The articles ran in the Tuesday, August
29,
editions.

New York Times:
NAZIS REPORT DEAL WITH PALESTINE ...
"Berlin.
A
remarkable announcement by the German Land Trade League [Land-handelsbund] ... indicates, if correct, that the much-heralded Jewish boycott of German goods has certain qualifications. . .. The arrangement, according to this announcement, provides that Germany will import
8
million to
10
million marks' worth of Jaffa oranges, ... [and] Palestine ... will take
20
million marks' worth of German industrial products. The exports to Palestine are to consist principally of agricultural machinery, motors, refrigerators, textiles ... and machinery for ... small manufacturing plants for buttons, leather goods, wicker furniture, and similar household goods .... The goods will be shipped on German vessels."
¹⁸

Palestine Post:
PALESTINE TRADE WITH NAZIS ...
"Berlin.
The Handelsbund ... of the Nazi Party, has stated that the agreement with Palestine whereby ... oranges were to be imported into Germany in exchange for the import of ... manufactured articles is the result of negotiations carried on within the last three years with various Palestinian cooperatives. It also states that a German commission will proceed to Palestine to arrange the details."
¹⁹

Jewish Daily Bulletin:
BRITISH, PALESTINE GOVERNMENTS, ZIONISTS DENY REPORTS AS NAZIS REVEAL ORANGE DEAL ...
"London.
Considerable mystification exists here as to the purported Nazi-Palestine agreement ... with the general impression that the reports ... are incorrect, and an attempt to create feeling among the Jews that will lead to a breaking down of the boycott. . .. The Palestine government and the British Colonial Office here deny any knowledge of ... this astonishing and ambiguous agreement. It is pointed out [by Jewish and Zionist sources] that ... apart from the moral aspect of the deal on the anti-Nazi boycott, the agreement would represent a bad bargain."
²⁰

Haaretz:
ON THE QUESTION OF THE AGREEMENT FOR AN ORANGE SHIPMENT TO GERMANY ...
"Berlin.
The Landhandelsbund ... of the Nazi Party [said] ... the agreement for a shipment of
18
million marks' worth of oranges ... has
not
yet definitely been completed. Negotiations are being held at the Reich Ministry for Food."
²¹

Sharply worded denunciations from Zionist leaders and rank and file throughout the world poured into the special post office in the Congress hall. One of the most threatening came from Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland, one of American Zionism's towering figures. Repeating the essence of his protest, Rabbi Silver told a Jewish Telegraph Agency interviewer:
"If
the reports of those two deals are correct, and I for one find them unthinkable and inconceivable, then every Jew who goes to Palestine becomes an importer of German goods into Palestine, and this at a time when we deny Jewry ... of the world the right to trade with Germany."
²²

Unable to conceal his fury, Rabbi Silver declared, "Why, the very idea of Palestinian Jewry negotiating with Hitler about business instead of demanding justice for the persecuted Jews of Germany is unthinkable. One might think that the whole affair was a bankruptcy sale and that the Jews of Palestine were endeavoring to salvage a few bargains for themselves. Palestinian Jewry should be showing the way to unified action and not be willing to victimize the rest of the world for a million crates of oranges."
²³

Understanding full well that the JTA would distribute his remarks throughout the world, Rabbi Silver made the following declaration: "This is a test case. Always Palestine has asked the Jews of the world to sacrifice for Palestine. Now the time has come to ask, will Palestine make a commercial sacrifice for the fifteen million Jews of the world? We say to the Palestinian Jews,
we
won't trade with the enemy and we won't permit the Jews of Palestine to."
²⁴

Untermyer sent Prague a cablegram demanding that Zionist leaders comprehensively deny the orange agreement. The news was "probably untrue," said Untermyer's cable, and was undoubtedly "spread to injure the boycott that is daily growing more formidable." He then insisted the Eighteenth Zionist Congress disown any pact trafficking in Nazi merchandise, for "world Jewry will tolerate no dealings with Germany and will denounce any body that dares thus to sell our birthright for a mess of potage. We are loyal Palestinians," warned Untermyer, "but the outcome of this struggle is vastly more important than selling oranges."
²⁵
Specifying the consequences, Untermyer threatened that unless the orange agreement was immediately investigated and denied, a convention of American Zionists would be summoned forthwith to repudiate the agreement, order the immediate recall of the entire U.S. delegation from Prague, and formally disassociate American Zionism from the Zionist Organization.
²⁶

If
American Zionist organizers ordered their thirty delegates home, about 10
percent of the Congress would depart. Even American Mapai delegates would be obligated to return if Untermyer could persuade Mapai's American headquarters to pass a binding resolution recalling them. Non-American elements of Mizrachi and Revisionism would be happy to follow, thus subtracting another thirty or forty delegates. And since the American delegates held great power in the General Zionist party and the small Radical Zionist party, perhaps another ten delegates would also be compelled to walk out. Untermyer therefore had the power to trigger the departure of sixty to eighty delegates, or about 25 percent of the entire Congress. But beyond mere numbers, the American delegation played a politically and financially indispensable role in almost every Zionist effort, and this, too, would be lost.