ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS

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BRENNER : ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS consciousness in as many Jews as would listen and training youths for occupations useful in the economic development of Palestine. Anything else was useless and palliative. In 1925 the most vehement protagonist of total abstentionism, Jacob Klatzkin, the co-editor of the massive Encyclopedia Judaica, laid down the full implications of the Zionist approach to anti-Semitism. If we do not admit the rightfulness of antisemitism, we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism. If our people is deserving and willing to live its own national life, then it is an alien body thrust into the nations among whom it lives, an alien body that insists on its own distinctive identity, reducing the domain of their life. It is right, therefore, that they should fight against us for their national integrity . . . Instead of establishing societies for defense against the antisemites, who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defense against our friends who desire to defend our rights. 54 German Zionism was distinctive in the WZO, in that the ZVfD leaders opposed taking any part in local politics. To Blumenfeld, grenzuberschreitung (overstepping the borders) was the dreaded sin. Blumenfeld completely accepted the anti-Semitic line that Germany belonged to the Aryan race and that for a Jew to hold an office in the land of his birth was nothing more than an intrusion into the affairs of another volk. In theory the ZVfD insisted that every single one of its members should eventually emigrate to Palestine, but of course this was completely unrealistic. Some 2,000 settlers went from Germany to Palestine between 1897 and 1933, but many of these were Russians [31] stranded there after the revolution. In 1930 the ZVfD had 9,059 paidup members, but the dues were nominal and in no way a sign of deep commitment . For all Blumenfeld's enthusiasm, Zionism was not an important element in the Weimar Republic. When the warning signs of the Nazi surge appeared in the June 1930 elections in Saxony, where they obtained 14.4 per cent of the vote, the Berlin Jewish community put pressure on the ZVfD to join a Reichstag Election Committee in conjunction with the CV and other assimilationists. But the ZVfD,s adherence was strictly nominal; the assimilationists complained that the Zionists put barely any time or money into it, and it dissolved immediately after the election. A Rundschau article by Siegfried Moses, later Blumenfeld’s successor as head of the federation, demonstrated the Zionists, indifference to the construction of a strenuous defence: We have always believed the defense against anti-Semitism to be a task which concerns all Jews and have clearly stated the methods of which we approve and those which we consider irrelevant or ineffective. But it is true that the defense against antiSemitism is not our main task, it does not concern us to the same extent 54 Jacob Agus, The Meaning of Jewish History, vol. II, p. 425. — 34 —
BRENNER : ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS and is not of the same importance for us as is the work for Palestine and, in a somewhat different sense, the work of the Jewish communities. 55 Even after the election in September 1930 the Zionists argued against the notion of creating an effective front against the Nazis. A.W. Rom insisted in the Rundschau that any defence could only be a waste of time. To him 'The most important lesson we have learned from this election is that it is much more important to strengthen the Jewish community in Germany from within than to conduct… an external fight.’ 56 The ZVfD leaders could never effectively unite with the assimilationists on defence work. They were total abstentionists politically, and they were volkists; they did not believe in the CV’s fundamental premiss that the Jews were Germans. Their concern was that the Jews should emphasise their Jewishness. They reasoned that if Jews started to consider themselves a separate national minority, and stopped interfering in ‘Aryan’ affairs, it would be possible to get the anti-Semites to tolerate them on a basis of a 'dignified’ coexistence. The assimilationists would have none of this; to them the Zionist position was just an echo of the Nazi line. There is no doubt that the assimilationists [32] were correct. But even if the Zionists had convinced every Jew to support their stance, it would not have helped. Hitler did not care what the Jews thought of themselves; he wanted them out of Germany and, preferably, dead. The Zionist solution was no solution. There was nothing the Jews could have done to mollify anti-Semitism. Only the defeat of Nazism could have helped the Jews, and that could only have happened if they had united with the anti-Nazi working class on a programme of militant resistance. But this was anathema to the ZVfD leadership who, in 1932, when Hitler was gaining strength by the day, chose to organise anti- Communist meetings to warn Jewish youth against 'red assimilation’. 57 The Zionist Minorities As Hitler rose to power, minorities within the ZVfD increasingly ignored Blumenfeld's strictures against political action and either worked with the CV or looked to the other political elements for their salvation. Georg Kareski, a banker, had long been in disagreement with Blumenfeld over the ZVfD President's basic indifference to intemal Jewish community politics, and in 1919 he had established a Judische Volkspartei to run in the Berlin Jewish community elections on a programme with greater emphasis on Jewish schooling. In 1930 Kareski surfaced in the larger German political arena as a candidate for the Reichstag on the Catholic Centre ticket (he lost) and an 'Organisation of Jewish Centre Party Voters' was set up by his co-thinkers. The spectacle amused a Social Democratic wag: 55 Margaret Edelheim-Muehsam, 'Reactions of the Jewish Press to the Nazi Challenge', Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. V (1960), p. 312. 56 Ibid., p. 314. 57 Donald Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany, p. 30. — 35 —
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ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS

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