Synopsis

On August 7, 1933, leaders of the Zionist movement concluded a controversial pact with the Third Reich which transferred some 60,000 Jews and some $200 million to Jewish Palestine. In return, Zionists agreed to halt the worldwide Jewish-led anti-Nazi boycott that threatened to topple the Hitler regime at its most vulnerable point. The debate tore the pre-War Jewish world apart. Ultimately, The Transfer Agreement saved lives, rescued assets, and seeded the infrastructure of the Jewish State.

Author Edwin Black, son of Polish Holocaust survivors, has written the compelling, painful story of The Transfer Agreement. His book, The Transfer Agreement, the Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine (Macmillan 1984 and Dialog Press 2000) took him five years heading a team of researchers and translators, digging through archives in the US, England, Germany, and Israel. Many of the 35,000 documents he uncovered were previously sealed.

The Transfer Agreement, written in a tense, dramatic style, became an immediate and controversial bestseller when it first appeared in 1984. Quickly, it became the subject of massive TV, radio, and print coverage. Macmillan nominated the book for a Pulitzer, and in 1984 the book received the Carl Sandburg Award for the best nonfiction of the year. The Transfer Agreement was controversial and shattering to its readers precisely because the book's topic was ahead of its time. The world was not ready to comprehend complicated asset transfer discussions between the Zionists and Nazis, two groups whose relations were not widely known. But with a gun to the head of the Jewish people, Zionists did undertake the Transfer Agreement.

Now that the world has confronted the issue of Holocaust-era assets in Nazi pilfered gold, Nazi stolen art, Nazi insurance, and Nazi slave labor, The Transfer Agreement stands out as the sole example of a Jewish asset rescue that occurred before the genocidal period. The terrible choices its negotiators undertook can now be viewed in a new light.

Carroll & Graf has released a special updated edition of The Transfer Agreement, with a new author's introduction and a new afterword by Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

 


Copyright © 1999 - 2004 by Edwin Black

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