[3.13. Competition in
fund raising between JDC and
Zionists - 174,803 Jews emigrated 1933-1937]
[In the "USA" Zionism and JDC are
competitors for fund raising]
The problem of Zionism exercised JDC, too, to a considerable extent,
though from a different angle. In the United States the Palestine
appeals were the direct competitors of JDC in its fund raising efforts.
From a practical as well as an ideological point of view, JDC
emphasized that Palestine, whatever its undoubted contribution to the
solution of the German Jewish problem, could not be the only solution.
Hyman, a man inclined to search for the deeper meaning of things and
processes, termed Zionism in this context a millennial movement. He
scoffed at the idea that nothing should be done until a millennium was
reached by the aid of one program or another, because indeed "all other
things are merely palliative."
(End note 71: Hyman to Janowsky, 11/24/37 [24 November 1937], R13)
The Zionists thought in terms of a national future and an overall
solution, whereas JDC tended to see the immediate practical problems
involved in helping persecuted Jews. The Zionists therefore were
inclined to minimize avenues of rescue other than Palestine, at least
until 1937/8, and often would not seriously consider the possibilities
of rescuing Jews by sending them to other countries; while JDC did not
see beyond the immediate present and could not tear itself from its
cosmopolitan concepts, which perhaps had been valid in the liberal
pre-Hitler era but had little validity in the growing catastrophe of
European Jewry.
[174,803 emigrants from Germany
1933-1937]
Even practically speaking, from 1933 through 1937, 38,043 out of
174,803 emigrants from Germany had found refuge in Palestine.
This is even more significant when one remembers that those who entered
Palestine were settled and absorbed there, whereas the majority of
those who remained in Europe were neither settled nor absorbed.
[The Arabs are not asked, and Herzl's booklet from 1896 is always
saying legally that Arabs can be driven out like the natives in the
"USA"...]
Hyman was very much concerned about the pro-Palestine statements that
many of the liberal Jewish leaders in Germany made to the effect that
"everything is hopeless in Germany; ... practically all want to go to
Palestine." The logical conclusion from this attitude, he said, was
that Palestine work and the Palestine program were the only kind of
program that the American Jews should support. This was most
unfortunate, Hyman stated; surely JDC was entitled to be reinforced by
the Jewish leaders in Germany with a plea for aid and support of the
institutions that must be maintained inside Germany. This despite the
"full acknowledgment (p.136)
of what Palestine has meant to these Jews of Germany."
Hyman thought that a statement should be made by the German Jews that
Palestine was not the sole outlet - which of course, factually
speaking, it was not.
(End note 72:
-- The statistics are taken from an article by Max Birnbaum in the
Jüdisches Gemeindeblatt für die Synagogengemeinden in Preussen und
Norddeutschland, 4/4/1938 [4 April 1938].
-- Hyman to Kahn, 10/11/35 [11 October 1935], CON. 2;
-- Hyman explained his position in an article published in the 1937
Proceedings of the National
Conference of Jewish Social Welfare in the
Jewish Social Service Quarterly
(R12). Non-Zionists, he said, see nothing wrong in supporting Communism
if this would help millions of Jews to find their feet in a new Russian
economy; at the same time they can support "the building up of a great
Jewish settlement of refuge and of cultural development in Palestine
and yet decline to regard themselves as actually or potentially
elements of a Jewish nation with its center in Palestine." While
Palestine was capable of absorbing masses of immigrants, they do
"deprecate the constant emphasis on Palestine by certain groups", as a
Jewish national movement. The major goal of non-Zionists was "the
integration of Jews with the life of their lands of birth or adoption.")
[The Hitler regime supports
Zionism
for emigration to Palestine]
Kahn agreed, but explained that the Nazis supported Zionism because it
promised the largest emigration of Jews from Germany; hence German
Jewish leaders could not make any public statement about other outlets.
Still less could they mention the desire to maintain Jewish
institutions in Germany. The Nazis had dissolved one meeting in Germany
simply because the speaker had said, "We have to provide for the people
who go away and for the Jews who must stay in Germany."
(End note 73: Kahn to Hyman, 11/3/35 [3 November 1935], CON 2)
[There are big lies of the NS regime: The number of visas is not
increasing, and at the end Palestine is projected to be occupied by NS
armies. Then the Jewish settlers had installed all infrastructure and
the NS armies could take them over...]
[Zionism is also looking for other emigration
countries than Palestine]
The sharp reduction of emigration into Palestine in 1936 - only 12,929
emigrated there from Germany that year - somewhat changed the Zionist
policy. Weizmann, for his part, had never taken a completely exclusive
point of view, and many individual Zionists shared his stand: now, the
Zionists began to cooperate in the search for outlets other than
Palestine. Despite the insistence of Zionists on Palestine for national
and historic reasons, the difference between them and the other became
smaller. JDC abandoned its doubts about supporting emigration and began
to see that maintaining institutions in Germany was only a holding
operation. The Zionists outside of Germany in turn began to perceive
the importance of maintaining those institutions as long as there were
Jews in Germany who needed them. The two main wings in Jewish life drew
slowly closer on purely practical grounds as the 1930s progressed and
the situation in Germany became more and more difficult.
