The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Secret Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine

First published to international acclaim in 1984, The Transfer Agreement stunned readers worldwide with its revelations of a pact between Zionist leaders and Hitler's Third Reich. Concluded in 1933, the agreement transferred 60,000 Jews and $100 million to Palestine on the condition that Zionist organizations would halt their economic boycott of Nazi Germany - a strategy that openly threatened to topple Hitler's government, then only in its first year of power.
The debate over this controversial deal virtually tore apart the Jewish world in the pre-World War II years, and it is still hotly debated today. The Transfer Agreement ultimately saved many lives, rescued assets, and helped lay the foundation for what would become Israel in 1948. With the world now confronting such morally complex issues as the compensation for wartime slave labor and the reluctance of Swiss banks to return Jewish assets to their rightful heirs, the boycott and the Transfer Agreement stand out strikingly as early examples of organized Jewish initiatives against Nazi terror. However difficult the choices made by Jewish leaders in the 1930s, they take on special meaning today.

Edwin Black is the son of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. He was the founder of Chicago Monthly and frequently contributed to the Chicago Tribune and other publications. He lectures and writes extensively on Jewish and Israeli subjects, and is the author of the Apocalyptic techno-thriller Format C: