Lechu Lechem Western Jews!

10 Marcheshvan 5780
Erev Shabbat Kodesh
Parashat Lech Lecha

Hashem said to Avram, "Go for yourself from your land, from your relatives, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you."

The commentary says on the seemingly superfluous words "for yourself," that it means "go for your own benefit and for your own good."

What goes for the father, goes as well for the children.

***

As soon as Hitler, y"sh rose to power, any doubts any European Jews still harbored as to his intentions should have been put to rest.  But, surely by the time Kristallnacht happened, could anyone have still had any illusions that Jews could continue to live in Europe?

1933

January 30, 1933 - Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany a nation with a Jewish population of 566,000.

February 22, 1933 - 40,000 SA and SS men are sworn in as auxiliary police.

February 27, 1933 - Nazis burn Reichstag building to create crisis atmosphere.

February 28, 1933 - Emergency powers granted to Hitler as a result of the Reichstag fire.

March 22, 1933 - Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near Munich, to be followed by Buchenwald near Weimar in central Germany, Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern Germany, and Ravensbrück for women.

March 24, 1933 - German Parliament passes Enabling Act giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

April 1, 1933 - Nazis stage boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.

April 11, 1933 - Nazis issue a Decree defining a non-Aryan as "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith."

April 26, 1933 - The Gestapo is born, created by Hermann Göring in the German state of Prussia.

May 10, 1933 - Burning of books in Berlin and throughout Germany.

July 14, 1933 - Nazi Party is declared the only legal party in Germany; Also, Nazis pass Law to strip Jewish immigrants from Poland of their German citizenship.

In July - Nazis pass law allowing for forced sterilization of those found by a Hereditary Health Court to have genetic defects.

In September - Nazis establish Reich Chamber of Culture, then exclude Jews from the Arts.

September 29, 1933 - Nazis prohibit Jews from owning land.

October 4, 1933 - Jews are prohibited from being newspaper editors.

November 24, 1933 - Nazis pass a Law against Habitual and Dangerous Criminals, which allows beggars, the homeless, alcoholics and the unemployed to be sent to concentration camps.

1934

January 24, 1934 - Jews are banned from the German Labor Front.

May 17, 1934 - Jews not allowed national health insurance.

June 30, 1934 - The Night of Long Knives occurs as Hitler, Göring and Himmler conduct a purge of the SA (storm trooper) leadership.

July 20, 1934 - The SS (Schutzstaffel) is made an independent organization from the SA.

July 22, 1934 - Jews are prohibited from getting legal qualifications.

August 2, 1934 - German President von Hindenburg dies. Hitler becomes Führer.

August 19, 1934 - Hitler receives a 90 percent 'Yes' vote from German voters approving his new powers.

1935

May 21, 1935 - Nazis ban Jews from serving in the military.

June 26, 1935 - Nazis pass law allowing forced abortions on women to prevent them from passing on hereditary diseases.

August 6, 1935 - Nazis force Jewish performers/artists to join Jewish Cultural Unions.

September 15, 1935 - Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews decreed.

1936

February 10, 1936 - The German Gestapo is placed above the law.

In March - SS Deathshead division is established to guard concentration camps.

March 7, 1936 - Nazis occupy the Rhineland.

June 17, 1936 - Heinrich Himmler is appointed chief of the German Police.

August 1, 1936 - Olympic games begin in Berlin. Hitler and top Nazis seek to gain legitimacy through favorable public opinion from foreign visitors and thus, temporarily refrain from actions against Jews.

In August - Nazis set up an Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortions (by healthy women).

1937

In January - Jews are banned from many professional occupations including teaching Germans, and from being accountants or dentists. They are also denied tax reductions and child allowances.

November 8, 1937 - 'Eternal Jew' travelling exhibition opens in Munich.

1938  

March 12/13, 1938 - Nazi troops enter Austria, which has a population of 200,000 Jews, mainly living in Vienna. Hitler announces Anschluss (union) with Austria.

In March - After the Anschluss, the SS is placed in charge of Jewish affairs in Austria with Adolf Eichmann establishing an Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. Himmler then establishes Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz.

April 22, 1938 - Nazis prohibit Aryan 'front-ownership' of Jewish businesses.

April 26, 1938 - Nazis order Jews to register wealth and property.

June 14, 1938 - Nazis order Jewish-owned businesses to register.

In July - At Evian, France, the U.S. convenes a League of Nations conference with delegates from 32 countries to consider helping Jews fleeing Hitler, but results in inaction as no country will accept them.

July 6, 1938 - Nazis prohibited Jews from trading and providing a variety of specified commercial services.

July 23, 1938 - Nazis order Jews over age 15 to apply for identity cards from the police, to be shown on demand to any police officer.

July 25, 1938 - Jewish doctors prohibited by law from practicing medicine.

August 11, 1938 - Nazis destroy the synagogue in Nuremberg.

August 17, 1938 - Nazis require Jewish women to add Sarah and men to add Israel to their names on all legal documents including passports.

September 27, 1938 - Jews are prohibited from all legal practices.

October 5, 1938 - Law requires Jewish passports to be stamped with a large red "J."

October 15, 1938 - Nazi troops occupy the Sudetenland.

October 28, 1938 - Nazis arrest 17,000 Jews of Polish nationality living in Germany, then expel them back to Poland which refuses them entry, leaving them in 'No-Man's Land' near the Polish border for several months.

November 7, 1938 - Ernst vom Rath, third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, is shot and mortally wounded by Herschel Grynszpan, the 17-year-old son of one of the deported Polish Jews. Rath dies on November 9, precipitating Kristallnacht.

November 9/10 - Kristallnacht - The Night of Broken Glass.  (Source)

Consider the situation in Eretz Yisrael over the same time period...

...in Mandatory Palestine, a growing Jewish population (174,610 in 1931, rising to 384,078 in 1936) was acquiring land and developing the structures of a future Jewish state despite opposition from the Arab population.

Hanotea (הַנּוֹטֵעַ, "the Planter") was a citrus planting company based in Netanya and established in 1929 by long-established Jewish settlers in Palestine involved in the Benei Binyamin movement. In a deal worked out with the Reich Economics Ministry, the blocked German bank accounts of prospective immigrants would be unblocked and funds from them used by Hanotea to buy agricultural German goods; these goods, along with the immigrants, would then be shipped to Palestine, and the immigrants would be granted a house or citrus plantation by the company to the same value. Hanotea's director, Sam Cohen, represented the company in direct negotiation with the Reich Economics Ministry beginning in March 1933. In May 1933 Hanotea applied for permission to transfer capital from Germany to Palestine. This pilot arrangement appeared to be operating successfully, and so paved the way for the later Haavara Agreement.

The Haavara (Transfer) Agreement, negotiated by Eliezer Hoofein, director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, was agreed to by the Reich Economics Ministry in 1933, and continued, with declining German government support, until it was wound up in 1939. Under the agreement, Jews emigrating from Germany could use their assets to purchase German-manufactured goods for export, thus salvaging their personal assets during emigration. The agreement provided a substantial export market for German factories to British-ruled Palestine. Between November, 1933, and 31 December 1937, 77,800,000 Reichmarks, or $22,500,000, (values in 1938 currency) worth of goods were exported to Jewish businesses in Palestine under the program. By the time the program ended with the start of World War II, the total had risen to 105,000,000 marks (about $35,000,000, 1939 values).

Emigrants with capital of £1,000, (about $5,000 in 1930s currency value) could move to Palestine in spite of severe British restrictions on Jewish immigration under an immigrant investor program similar to the modern EB-5 visa. Under the Transfer Agreement, about 39% of an emigrant's funds were given to Jewish communal economic development projects, leaving individuals with about 43% of the funds.

The Haavara Agreement was thought among some German circles to be a possible way to solve the "Jewish problem." The head of the Middle Eastern division of the foreign ministry, the anti-NSDAP politician Werner Otto von Hentig, supported the policy of settling Jews in Palestine. Hentig believed that if the Jewish population was concentrated in a single foreign entity, then foreign diplomatic policy and containment of the Jews would become easier. Hitler's own support of the Haavara Agreement was unclear and varied throughout the 1930s. Initially, Hitler seemed indifferent to the economic details of the plan, but he supported it in the period from September 1937 to 1939.

After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 the program was ended.

The agreement was controversial both within the NSDAP and in the Zionist movement. As historian Edwin Black put it, "The Transfer Agreement tore the Jewish world apart, turning leader against leader, threatening rebellion and even assassination." Opposition came in particular from the mainstream US leadership of the World Zionist Congress, in particular Abba Hillel Silver and American Jewish Congress president Rabbi Stephen Wise. Wise and other leaders of the Anti-Nazi boycott of 1933 argued against the agreement, narrowly failing to persuade the Nineteenth Zionist Congress in August 1935 to vote against it.

The right-wing Revisionist Zionists and their leader Vladimir Jabotinsky were even more vocal in their opposition. The Revisionist newspaper in Palestine, Hazit Haam published a sharp denunciation of those involved in the agreement as "betrayers", and shortly afterwards one of the negotiators, Haim Arlosoroff was assassinated.  (Source)

Clearly, Hashem provided an escape hatch, but only up until a certain point.  And that point seems to have been 1939.  Until then, immigration to Eretz Yisrael for Jews was unrestricted.

The White Paper of 1939 was a policy paper issued by the British government under Neville Chamberlain in response to the 1936–39 Arab Revolt. Following its formal approval in the House of Commons on 23 May 1939, it acted as the governing policy for Mandatory Palestine from 1939 until the British departure in 1948, the matter of the Mandate meanwhile having been referred to the United Nations.

The policy, first drafted in March 1939, was prepared by the British government unilaterally as a result of the failure of the Arab-Zionist London Conference. The paper called for the establishment of a Jewish national home in an independent Palestinian state within 10 years, rejecting the idea of partitioning Palestine. It also limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 for 5 years, and ruled that further immigration was to be determined by the Arab majority (section II). Restrictions were put on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs (section III).

 And the "grace" period for the Jews of Europe was over as they found themselves both locked in and locked out.

Judging by the lessons of history, the rising tide of antisemitism around the world is indicative of another wave meant to wash Jews up on the shores of their Holy Land.  The really smart ones will not wait too long.

The Western Jews of 2019 have two strikes against them: (1) they've seen what a Holocaust looks like, and (2)  it's never been so easy to make aliyah to Eretz Yisrael.

Western Jews!  Lechu Lechem!  Go for yourselves!  Go home to Eretz Yisrael!!

~ SHABBAT SHALOM ~