The Haavara Agreement (1933-1939)
Up until 1941, the Nazi regime sought to make Germany’s Jewish population emigrate rather than kill them – the systematic extermination would come later.
Why did this mass emigration fail?
Simply put: nobody wanted to take in German Jews… Read more on this here.
However, one group would actively welcomed them: the Zionist settlers in British Mandate Palestine, (established after Arab assistance to the British against Ottoman rule in Palestine…)
Britain officially opposed increased Jewish immigration (citing “the interests of the present population and the land’s absorptive capacity”), so to obtain a visa applicants needed to show £1,000 Palestine Pounds (about $5,000 at the time – a substantial sum that few refugees could normally access).
Germany strictly prohibited foreign currency exports, yet made a special exception for Jewish emigrants. When this drained Reichsbank reserves, Jewish businessmen proposed an alternative that the Nazis accepted:
The Haavara (“Transfer”) System worked as follows:
- Emigrating Jews deposited funds in the Templer Bank (yes, that was its actual name) in Germany
- Importers (mostly Jewish, some Arab) wanting German goods, paid the Anglo-Palestine Bank (established by the World Zionist Organization)
- German manufacturers received payment from the Templer Bank
- Migrants obtained certificates that they would receive enough capital upon arrival to qualify for British visas
- Upon arrival, they recovered portions of their capital
This was extraordinary compared to standard Jewish emigration:
- External capital transfers faced crushing taxes (30% in 1931 → 95% by 1939 for assets >RM50,000)
Approximately 50,000 German Jews utilized this route:
- Professionals (doctors, lawyers, merchants) could restart their lives, not arriving penniless.
- Workers/students received Zionist assistance despite limited funds
- Many children were sent ahead through youth programs
- The system simultaneously developed Palestine’s infrastructure through German industrial/agricultural imports
When the 1937 Peel Commission proposed partitioning Palestine, one might expect the Nazis to terminate the arrangement. Remarkably, they continued it until war erupted in 1939. The SS actively facilitated Jewish emigration to Palestine until 1941, even collaborating with the Mossad le-Aliyah Bet to bypass British immigration caps.
Later Nazi attempts to exploit Arab-Jewish tensions faltered precisely because the Haavara Agreement had enabled significant Jewish immigration to Palestine. Unsurprisingly, all parties – Britain, Germany, and Zionist organizations – found this complex history inconvenient to remember.