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awareness of that danger is the first true line of defense. 109
Thompson also warned that
the forced expulsion of unwanted minorities threatened international order with anarchy.
If involuntary émigrés were not provided with the means to reestablish themselves as
productive citizens then they would “become [an unwanted] burden upon their hosts.” As
a result, the immigrants and receiving nations faced potential “catastrophe.” Mass
migration, she believed, was no longer solely a matter of humanitarian concern but “must
now be regarded as a problem of international politics.” 110
Consequently, she called upon the Roosevelt Administration to enter into
discussions with the German Government to devise a rescue scheme along the lines of the
earlier Ha’avarah Agreement which coupled Jewish immigration into Palestine with
increased German foreign trade; a process that allowed émigrés to retain adequate monies
to facilitate resettlement and assimilation into a new homeland. 111 She believed that only
the United States, with its “faith in the democratic principles,” could lead an international
109 “On the Record Wake Up and Live!” by Dorothy Thompson in Congressional Record Appendix,
March 16, 1938, Seventy-Fifth Congress, Third Session, vol. 9, 1046-1047. Thompson was the Berlin
bureau chief for the New York Post and in 1934 she became the first journalist to be expelled by order of
the Fuehrer from Germany because of her criticism of Hitler and the Nazi Government.
110 Dorothy Thompson, “Refugees: A World Problem,” Foreign Affairs, 16 (1938): 377.
111 The Ha’avarah or Transfer Agreement was an accord arranged during 1933 between the Jewish
Agency for Palestine, the German Zionist Federation and the Reich Ministry of Economics. The plan
allowed those Jews who were immigrating to Palestine to transfer a portion of their wealth and property in
the form of German trade goods purchased within Germany. Subsequently, such merchandise, equipment,
etc. could be resold in the Mandate for Palestinian currency. The nature of this exchange of Jewish bodies
for German wares was kept confidential due to its potential controversy until it was revealed in 1935. The
Nazi regime was motivated by the significant effect of the world wide economic boycott of Germany in
1933. Jews who supported this arrangement were opposed to such an embargo although, in the view of
many contemporaries and later historians, the boycott and the loss of foreign exchange could have forced
the collapse of Nazi rule. “The Transfer Agreement and the Boycott Movement: A Jewish Dilemma on the
Eve of the Holocaust” by Yf’aat Weiss, Shoah Resource Center, available from
http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203231.pdf; Internet; accessed October
7, 2010. For a more detailed analysis of this event and the marked divergence of opinion within the
international Jewish community see Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement (New York: Carroll and Graf
Publishers), 2001.
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