[4.9. Nuremberg race
laws 1935 provoking speedy action -
Council for German Jewry in London - but no action]
[Sep 1935: Nuremberg race laws
make clear that German Jewry has to emigrate]
The steady worsening of the situation was punctuated by the passage of
the September 1935 Nuremberg laws in Germany, which openly made Jews
into second-class citizens. After the fall of 1935, it became clear to
many that German Jewry had no choice but to emigrate. The problem was
how long this would take and what the financial and political tools
would be necessary to effect such emigration.
[McDonald's last action brings
British and American Jewish bodies together - speedy action needed]
McDonald's last, and this time at least partially successful, effort
was to bring together the British and American Jewish bodies for common
action in face of the threat to German Jews.
The irony of a non-Jewish humanitarian's being the essential factor in
achieving cooperation between Jews should not be overlooked: McDonald
reported to a rather reluctant Warburg in November 1935 that he was
trying to persuade Lord Bearsted and Simon Marks, two leading British
Jews, to come to the United States to meet with American Jewish
leaders.
(End note 49: WAC, Box 324 (a), McDonald to Warburg, 11/21/35 [21
November 1935])
Among British Jews he found, he said, an unanimous appreciation of the
dangers and of the necessity for
speedy
action. Soon the moving spirit in the British camp became Sir
Herbert Samuel, the noted liberal leader and moderate Zionist (he had
been the first British high commissioner to Palestine after World War
I).
[Since Dec 1935: Speedy action -
Lord Bearsted and Marks present a British emigration plan - also an ICA
plan - 12 to 16 million $ costs]
Events then moved at unaccustomed speed. In December 1935 (p.153)
Lord Bearsted and Marks announced the forthcoming visit of a "leading
Jewish statesman" - obviously Samuel was meant - and asked for the
postponement of separate fund-raising campaigns in America until
consultations regarding a concerted emigration plan from Germany could
be agreed upon. They were thinking of a plan to take 23,000 Jews out of
Germany yearly. Warburg's reaction was guarded. The visit would be
welcome, but JDC was quite clear about preserving its independence.
In Britain, meanwhile, ICA [Jewish Colonization Association] took a
similar stand: Goldsmid promised
cooperation and coordination, but declared that ICA would retain its
independence. The reluctance with which the more conservative groups
regarded the proposals stemmed at least partly from the fear of being
swamped by Zionist influence. Their caution was strengthened by the
fact that early in January items appeared in the New York Times playing
up the emigration plan and the forthcoming British Jewish visit to the
United States - Warburg was quite certain that any publicity at that
early stage was most unhelpful. Also, Warburg was not quite clear what
the plan actually consisted of. According to one version it would cost
$ 16 million; another version said $ 12 million for four years.
[21 January 1936: New York:
Jewish British emigration plan presented - foundation of the Council
for German Jewry in London]
On January 21, 1936, three
representatives of British Jewry arrived in New York: Sir Herbert
Samuel, Simon Marks, an ardent Zionist, and Lord Bearsted, a
non-Zionist. To JDC the delegation seemed obviously weighted on the
Zionist side. For about two weeks the delegation held talks with JDC,
the Refugee Economic Committee (REC), and the Zionists. The plan now
became clearer: there were, the guests said, some 94,000 young Jews
between the ages of 17 and 35 still in Germany. It was proposed to help
8,000 of these to emigrate yearly to Palestine, 4,000 to the United
States, and 4,000 to other countries. Altogether, 64,000 young adults
would emigrate in four years. On top of that, an annual emigration of
5,000 children, and 500 Youth Aliyah to Palestine, would mean another
22,000 in four years. Older people who would leave with their younger
relatives would swell the total number to 42,000 yearly, or a total of
168,000 in four years.
(End note 50: 15-7, for a summary of the correspondence and reports on
the delegation's visit. See also Bentwich, op. cit. [They Found Refuge
(London 1965)], pp. 30 ff. The origins of the plan can be traced
to May 1935 at least, when a similar plan was submitted to JDC by Max
Kreutzberger, secretary of ZA (Executive Committee [Zentral-Ausschuss],
5/22/35 [22 May 1935]). He spoke of an emigration of 15-20,000
annually, half of whom would go to Palestine. The idea seems therefore
to have emanated from German Jewry itself and been accepted by
McDonald, who then obtained the agreement of CBF leaders in London to
support it).
The (p.154)
cost of all this would be about $ 15 million, of which two-thirds would
be borne by United States Jewry and one-third by British Jewry. A
central coordinating committee, to be called the Council for German
Jewry, was to be set up in London.
The American Jewish bodies agreed to these proposals in broad terms
after some rather heated discussions. JDC leaders declared that they
understood the council to have coordinating functions, because JDC's
contributors would hardly agree to having the distribution of their
funds determined by people in another country. Also, what JDC undertook
to do was essentially to devote their funds (other than their
commitments to Eastern Europe and other places) to the saving of German
Jewry in coordination with the others. This, of course, was what JDC
had been doing in any case, so that behind the façade of declarations
of goodwill the situation had not changed materially when the British
delegation left on February 5, 1936.
On January 1 Samuel had been received by Roosevelt, who had promised
him "a sympathetic attitude on the part of the (U.A.) German consulates
in the case of all suitable applications for emigration visas to this
country."
(End note 51: Ibid. [15-7, Executive Committee / Zentral-Ausschuss
(ZA), 5/22/35 (22 May 1935)])
Yet at the final meeting of the delegations, Marks was more realistic
than the enthusiastic newspaper reports when he said that in fact the
British delegation had accomplished very little.
[Skeptical voices of the Joint to
the agreement - Zionist efforts to get German Jews to Palestine]
Some JDC leaders saw even the small measure of agreement as a mistake.
Vladeck, Marshall, and Rosenberg argued that the Zionists would simply
use the agreement for getting Jews into Palestine. Zionists, Vladeck
said, agreed with Fascists that Jews should get out of Europe. That was
the reason why the Zionist flag was protected in Germany. Repercussions
in Eastern Europe to such large-scale emigration might increase
anti-Semitism there because governments would think that they could
evict Jews with Jewish financial support. If this meant, said another
participant in the discussion, "that when Jews are hurt, they shall
immediately be taken out of the country through a grand exodus, and ...
that money is paid to bring people out of places merely because
conditions are bad there, we would only succeed in muddling up the
(p.155)
situation for other Jews all over the world." On the other hand,
William Rosenwald argued, the Zionists got their funds on the strength
of the German crisis and yet only about 13 % (actually about 20 %) of
the admissions into Palestine were from Germany. If, as a result of
the new plan, the Zionists would devote a larger proportion of their
funds to help German Jewry, he said, the plan would commend itself "to
many of us."
(End note 52: Executive Committee, 2/10/36 [10 February 1936]; 15-11,
Rosenwald memo, 2/1/36 [1 February 1936]. Cf. also
Forverts, 2/17/35 [17 February
1935])
Warburg's influence neutralized the opposition, and the overwhelming
majority of the leading JDC laymen supported the new plan. However,
events in London soon made it seem that at least some of the criticism
had been justified.
[And nobody speaks with the Palestinians and with the Arabs. Already
now the Arab propaganda is fighting against any Jewish plan to place
more Jews in Palestina].
[The Council for German Jewry:
Always quarrel about Palestine or not]
The council was to be set up in London and consist of six men - three
each from Britain and the United States. The three Americans were to be
Warburg, Baerwald, and Rabbi Stephen Wise, the Zionist leader. With
Samuel and Marks considered as Zionists, there would thus be an equal
representation of Zionists and non-Zionists on the council. However,
after the British delegation had returned to London, Marks invited
Weizmann to join and, probably in order not to appear partial, Goldsmid
of ICA as well. This was done without prior consultation with the
Americans. On top of that, the British now interpreted the agreement in
New York to mean that JDC would raise funds over and above what it was
spending for all its other purposes.
In the early April session in London of the council's Preparatory
Committee, Kahn emphatically denied this interpretation.
On April 6 Warburg wrote a very outspoken, though humorous, letter to
Bentwich, who had been appointed director of the council, together with
Sir Wyndham Deedes, a non-Jew and a pro-Zionist. The council was,
Warburg said, clearly top-heavy on the Palestine end. His enthusiasm,
he added, was somewhat dampened. The English had allocated their money
to Palestine "in its entirety"; the consultations were therefore
somewhat futile and, he added, "some of us feel that we had better stay
at home and saw wood and satisfy the givers, as we have in the past, by
spending their contributions as the givers would want and as the
recipients desire."
(End note 53: 15-3, Kahn to New York, 4/3/36 [3 April 1936]; Baerwald
to Samuel, 4/7/36 [7 April 1936]; Warburg to Bentwich, 4/6/36 [6
April 1936]. As to Warburg's statement that the British had allocated
all their funds to Palestine, the situation by the end of October 1936
was that of the 721,035 pounds collected by them in Britain, 392,000
pounds had been allocated, of which 51 % went to Palestine (see:
Council of German Jewry, interim report, 10/30/36 [30 October 1936],
JDC Library). Cf. also: Executive Committee, 5/4/36 [4 May 1936]).
In the end only about half of the British funds went to Palestine.
(p.156)
[Council for German Jewry: Quarrel
about money for Palestine]
In the spring of 1936 the Zionists were demanding that 250,000 pounds
be allocated to aid the immigration to Palestine of 3,500 young
trainees. This would have meant that a very large sum of money would go
to settle a relatively small number of people, and JDC felt that it
could not agree to that - although there seems to have been no protest
on JDC's part when HICEM and ICA spent very large sums to effect the
settlement of equally small numbers of people in Latin American
countries.
One of the paradoxes of the situation was that the Zionists, especially
in America, had not been at all enthusiastic about the establishment of
the Council for German Jewry.
[1933: Boycott of German goods
supported by American Zionism]
Under the influence of Stephen S. Wise, American Zionism had come to
support the boycott of German goods that had been started by Abraham
Coralnik and Samuel Untermeyer in 1933, to which JDC was very much
opposed.
[Beginning 1936: American Zionists
don't want to buy German goods for Jewish emigration]
American Zionists thought that the council's plan was similar to the
Jewish Agency's German transfer scheme, to which American Zionism was
largely opposed. This, as we have mentioned, consisted of an agreement
to take out Jewish capital to Palestine in return for the promotion of
the export of German goods.
[Emigrated Jews should buy German goods in Palestine for construction
of their settlements which was happening already by the Haaverah
aggreement].
The boycott trend in the United States was so strong that JDC, itself
eager not to clash with the Zionists on this issue, decided that no
plan should be implemented that would facilitate the export of German
goods.
(End note 54: JC-1/10/36 [10 January 1936], 1/31/36 [31 January
1936])
[5 Feb 1936: Zionists want
emigration to Palestine in any case, also with German goods]
Now, after the delegation had returned to London and the Zionist
influence had gained weight, the situation was reversed: the Zionists
had been enthusiastic supporters of the council's plans, whereas JDC's
ardor had cooled considerably.
[Council for German Jewry:
Three JDE members are never in London - British allocate British money]
The marriage then had hardly taken place when a separation occurred,
though both sides took great care not to announce a divorce. On paper
there were soon five American Jewish members of the council, of whom
three were JDC representatives (Warburg, Baerwald, and Liebman; Liebman
represented REC [Refugee Economic Corporation], which was a JDC
affiliate). The two others were
Zionists. In reality, there usually was an American delegate
representing the JDC members in London who partook in the council's
deliberations.
Practically speaking, the money the council spent came from England
only (p.157)
and was allocated by the British members of the council. As to the
rest, there was much exchange of information and consultation and some
common action in Europe, especially in the refugee countries, but no
pooling of resources.
[No action to save young German
Jews by the Council because of lack of places]
The grandiose plan to evacuate young German Jews remained on paper.
To be sure, the reason for the inaction did not lie mainly with
interorganizational differences of opinion. Money alone, even had there
been much of it (which there was not), would not have solved
everything. There had to be places to which emigrants could be
directed, and on this major point the council did not advance beyond
what McDonald had done.
Max Warburg and Otto Hirsch from Germany "begged and pleaded for
action, meaning that monies be made available to start sending
(refugees) at the rate of 500 a month out of Germany to various parts
of the world, in addition to immigration to Palestine."
(End note 55: Executive Committee, 7/2/36 [2 July 1936], report by
David Bressler)
[Spring 1937: Warburg's initiative
for an umbrella organization of Jewish leaders]
In the spring of 1937, during the last months of his life, Warburg was
working on an idea to create an umbrella organization of Jewish leaders
of major organizations, to be weighted very definitely on the
non-Zionist side.
(End note 56: Executive Committee, 4/14/36 [14 April 1936])
[July 1937: Paris: Foundation of
an umbrella organization of Jewish leaders under Warburg - only one
session]
Such a committee was in fact set up and met in July [1936] in Paris for
the
first and only time. But one may doubt whether a mere reshuffling or
organizational change would have made much of a difference in a
situation that was determined by the non-Jewish world rather than by
Jewish leadership.
August 1937 approx.: Death of
Felix
Warburg
[Early 1937: Warburg's trip
through Europe brings only few places for German Jews to emigrate]
Warburg himself had been to Europe in early 1937, and his report was
not encouraging.
(End note 57: R13, Warburg at a meeting at the St. Regis Hotel, 4/29/37
[29 April 1937]; Executive Committee, 9/27/37 [27 September 1937])
Small numbers of people could emigrate to a few places with the help of
large sums of money, provided this was done quietly; the same was true
of the United States, where fear of anti-Semitism caused Jews to keep
very quiet regarding the numbers of Jews entering the country.
Palestine was, in 1937, awaiting the verdict of the Peel Commission,
and immigration was becoming restricted. The outlook was bleak.
[Until 1936: Palestine splits the
emotions of the Jews]
Until 1936 Palestine was, as we have seen, a main focus of emigration
for German Jews. This fact and the emotions aroused in the Jewish world
by the controversy about Palestine, as well as the bearing it had on
the relations in the United States between (p.158)
JDC and the Zionists, caused JDC to devote a fairly significant part of
its thinking to the Palestine problem.
