Quoting Tom Segev’s The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, page 29:
Others said that there was no reason not to negotiate with Adolf Hitler to save German Jews and bring them to Palestine; after all, Moses had had no qualms about negotiating with Pharaoh to take the children of Israel out of Egypt.^64^
In this struggle for control of the Zionist movement, the proponents of the haavara agreement prevailed. The next Zionist Congress, meeting in Lucerne in 1935, reaffirmed the policy. The Vaad Leumi, in the end, also rejected the boycott.^65^
The haavara agreement would in the end shore up the Jewish Agency—then almost bankrupt—and grant it renewed momentum. But this victory was not without cost; it effectively isolated the yishuv from the dominant current of world Jewish response to the rise of the [Third Reich]. Nevertheless, the pragmatists were convinced that the boycott of [the Third Reich] could not advance the interests of Palestine, that their ends could best be accomplished through contact with the [Reich].
Thus the leaders sought to keep relations with [the Third Reich] as normal as possible: Two months after Hitler came to power the Jewish Agency executive in Jerusalem had sent a telegram straight to the Führer in Berlin, assuring him that the yishuv had not declared a boycott against his country; the telegram was [supposedly] sent at the request of German Jewry in the hope of halting their persecution, but it reflected the Jewish Agency's inclination to maintain correct relations with the [Fascist] government.
Many years later, Menahem Begin revealed that the Zionist Organization had sent Hitler a cable of condolence on the death of President Hindenburg.^66^
There were further contacts with the [Fascists] over the years. Working in cooperation with the [Reich’s] authorities, the Jewish Agency maintained immigration agents in [Fascist] Berlin.^67^ Georg Landauer, for example, carried a letter, in German, certifying that the Jewish Agency had authorized him to conduct negotiations with the Third Reich about vocational training for prospective immigrants and arrangements for the transfer of their capital. The letter was signed by Arthur Ruppin and David Ben‐Gurion.^68^
(Emphasis added. Cheers to PalestineRemembered.com for showing me this.)
Click here for events that happened today (February 3).
1889: Risto Ryti, Fascist collaborator, was born.
1937: Spanish Nationalist and Fascist volunteer forces reached the outskirts of Malaga.
1938: Japanese Special Naval Landing Force troops captured Yantai, Shandong Province, and Imperial gunboats immediately entered the harbor to help eliminate the last pockets of Chinese resistance.
1940: The first Fascist aircraft to crash in England was a Heinkel He 111 aircraft shot down near Whitby, North Yorkshire, and two of the four Fascist crewmen died. On the other hand, Fascist submarine U‐58 chased Estonian vessel Reet for thirteen(!) hours, then sunk her with torpedoes in the North Sea halfway between Stavanger, Norway & Aberdeen, Scotland, and slaughtered eighteen folk. Likewise, three Fascist aircraft assaulted Norwegian steam ship Tempo as she passed close to the Longstone Lighthouse.
1941: Rome sent Fascist Party leaders to the Albanian front to bolster morale as Fascist troops in Eritrea withdrew into towns in the mountains. Berlin appointed General Erwin Rommel as the head of an unit temporarily named ‘German Army Troops in Africa’. Meanwhile, Axis submarine U‐107 sank British ship Empire Citizen south of Iceland, massacring seventy‐seven but leaving five alive, and later she struck HMS Cirspin, slaughtering twenty but leaving 121 alive.
1942: Axis forces counterattacked toward Vyazma, encircling several Soviet divisions, and He 111 bombers of the Luftwaffe I./KG 4 assaulted Soviet rail stations in central Russia during the night. Axis submarine U‐103 sank Panamanian freighter San Gil twenty‐five kilometers away from Virginia, and six Axis flying boats from Rabaul, New Britain bombed the Seven Mile airfield near Port Moresby, British Territory of Papua at 0300 hours, killing one Australian Army sergeant, but the damage done to the airfield was minor.
1943: Twelve He 111 aircraft, with supplies on board, flew over the northern pocket of Stalingrad before dawn. Of the eleven aircraft that reached the intended drop zone, only three dropped some of their cargo, as they found no Wehrmacht activity. During the day, the OKW issued an announcement to inform the German public of the defeat at Stalingrad. (The message, read over the radio, was preceded by a solemn drum roll and was followed by the twoth movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 5th symphony.)
1944: The Axis closed the concentration camp at Szebnie, Poland, and Amon Göth assumed responsibility for deporting or executing its prisoners. against any acts of resistance. Meanwhile, Axis Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt issued additional orders that supported swift severe reprisals against any acts of resistance. The orders also explicitly attributed any potential innocent civilian casualties the fault of resistance group and not of the Axis occupation. Additionally, the Fascists violated Vatican City sovereignty by dispatching troops to arrest several Jews hiding within Vatican City borders, and the Drancy concentration camp in Paris sent its 67th transport for Auschwitz concentration camp with more than one thousand Jews.
1945: The Axis lost Landsberg while Axis troops in Manila had to fight with the Western Allies. Meanwhile, Judge Roland Friesler, the fanatical Fascist who condemned to death the July plotters against his Chacnellor, died from an air raid on Berlin.
1946: The Soviets found Friedrich Jeckeln guilty and executed him in Riga.
1951: Hubert Lanz’s fellow anticommunists released him from prison even though he had only served three years of his twelve‐year sentence.