Nach Palästina

[D.Laurent]

I was checking epad website albums for some France 1940 pictures and found this picture.
From the album it is supposed to be taken in 1939 during/just after the polish campaign(Poland)

http://www.ecpad.fr/la-campagne-de-pologne



Does someone has more informations about that ?
- was the photo staged for propaganda for the german people or to keep under control european jewish ? (consequently the other question is : does german propaganda spread false information about a deportation to palestina ?)
- was it a trick from the germans to assure the complete cooperation of the jewish people they were ?(consequently the other question is : was it wide spread ? to which extend ?).

Thx !

[uberjude]

seems to be just another example of the legendary Nazi sense of humor; I wouldn't think too deeply on it. For example of the same phrase used elsewhere in Poland by the Nazis, see below:

http://www.zolynia.org/invasion.html

[murx]

In 1937 the anti-Semitic Polish government sent the Michael Lepecki expedition to Madagascar, accompanied by Jewish community representatives, to study the possibility of sending Poland's entire Jewish population there, in order to set up a Zionist state on the island.

The possibility of setting up a Zionist state on Madagascar (which was in fact first suggested by Herzl himself) also received consideration from the Nazi government. In 1938, Hitler agreed to send the President of the Reichsbank, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, to London for discussions with Jewish representatives Lord Bearsted and a Mr. Rublee of New York. The plan failed only due to intransigence on the part of the British government.

Another prominent Jewish leader, Haim Arlossorof, Secretary of the Histadrut, was also involved in similar negotiations with the Nazis according to the Protocols of the Knesset of 30.6.59 (the Israeli Hansard).

By the late 1930's, the German Jews were riding on a new peak of Zionist fervour, courtesy of the Nazi regime. Zionist organizations received three times as much in contributions in 1935-6 as they did in 1931-2, and the circulation of the Zionist weekly Judische Rundschau rose from 5,000 to 40,000. The Editor of the paper was the first to coin and make popular the slogan about the yellow star which Jews were later forced to wear: "Wear it with pride, the Yellow Star!" This was more than six years before Jews were forced to wear the star by law.

.......

But probably the most bizarre liaison between Hitlerism and Zionism was in Austria and Hungary, where prominent Jewish leaders actively cooperated with the Nazis in registering the Jewish population and keeping order in the ghettoes, in return for allowing the emigration to Palestine of thousands of young Jewish pioneers. The Nazis even agreed to set up agricultural schools for the would-be emigrants in Austria. This entire affair is described in rhapsodical terms in The Secret Roads by Jon and David Kimche, two prominent British Zionists. They describe how two young Jewish settlers made their way back to Berlin and Vienna in 1938 in order to put the plan to the Gestapo. Adolf Eichmann readily agreed to the scheme, and even expelled a group of nuns from a convent to provide a training farm for young Jewish emigrés. By the end of 1938, about a thousand Jews were being provided with training in these establishments. The two emissaries were allowed to move freely about Germany. They were even allowed to visit internment camps and select the most able Jewish youngsters for training and subsequent passage to Palestine.

Eichmann himself admitted to being a staunch Zionist, ever since he had studied Herzl's classic, The Jewish State (original title An Address to the Rothschilds) as part of his S.S. training. Eichmann attended, in civilian clothes, the commemoration ceremony of the thirty-fifth anniversary of Herzl's death. And in 1939 he protested against the desecration of Herzl's grave in Vienna. In 1937 Eichmann had visited Palestine on the formal invitation of a Zionist official. But he had scarcely arrived in the territory whereupon he was deported to Egypt by the British authorities. In Cairo, he was visited by a representative of one of the Jewish terrorist organizations Hagannah.

Even well into the war, in 1944, Eichmann still liaised with his Zionist friends. He made a deal with Dr. Rudolf Kastner, a leader of the Budapest Jewish community, that several thousand prominent Zionists would be allowed to emigrate to Palestine in return for Kastner keeping order amongst those who were being shipped to concentration camps.

I have the long version of the text somewhere...

[David Thompson]

murx -- We have a number of open threads on Nazi cooperation with the Zionist settlement of Palestine, and your post doesn't relate to the photograph in this thread. Please try to stay on the thread topic when posting, and if you have an off-topic notion, please use the forum search engine to see if the subject is already being discussed. It's a help to the readers and subsequent researchers to keep our factual discussions on topic and in single threads wherever possible.

[uberjude]

1. Eichmann didn't "admit" to be being a Zionist. He claimed to be a Zionist. Insofar as his Zionism manifested itself solely at the point in which his desire to make Germany judenrein coincided with the Zionists' desire to gain more Jewish immigrants, this is rather dubious. One might argue that a true "Zionist" would have expended considerably less energy than Eichmman did on exterminating the prospective population of der Judenstaat.
2. Eichmann didn't have "Zionist friends," unless your definition of friendship involves promising not to murder your "friends" and their families in exchange for services rendered.
3. while the hagganah would work with Lehi and Etzel in the 1940's, in the 1930's, they were certainly not a terrorist organization, and, in fact, during the Arab Revolt, followed a policy of "havlagah," or "restraint" and by and large didn't engage in offensive action against Arabs (and certainly not the British).


Murx, does this rehashing of reasonably well-known and accessible information in any way address the question asked? It was about a sign, and whether or not that sign in any way reflected some actual Nazi propaganda.

There's nothing in your post that relates to the image, or the use of the phrase "nach Palastina" in Poland in 1939. Or are you suggesting that Eichmann, in addition to his other duties, was also a sign-maker?

[michael mills]

The slogan "Jews to Palestine" was commonly used by anti-Jewish Polish groups in the 1930s, well before the German invasion.

What the photograph shows is that the German invaders of Poland had adopted that Polish slogan, no doubt as a means of winning favour with the Polish population, which, as openly admitted by the leader of Armia Krajowa, Rowecki, was thoroughly anti-Semitic. The aim a keenly desired goal that their own governement had been unable to achieve, namely the expulsion of the Jews from Poland.

The use of the slogan "nach Palaestina" by the German occupiers was in no way hypocritical. At the time of the invasion and occupation of Poland, in the latter months of 1939, agencies of the German Government, in particular the Gestapo, were negotiating with Zionist organisations on the promotion of Jewish emigration from Germany to Palestine, particularly illegal emigration, which was organised and funded by the Gestapo. It was not until late 1941 that Jewish emigration from Germany was prohibited and the Palestine Offices in that country closed.

However, emigration to Palestine, by its nature limited in scope, was reserved by the German authorities for German Jews. The preferred solution for the large Jewish population of the German Zone of Occupation in Poland was to expel them eastward into the Soviet Zone.

[D.Laurent]

thx for the informations,
i will try to find more info bout the context of this pictures (in case it was staged or not etc ...). Unfotunately, the desciption doesn't tell more.

[Slavomir]

I knew I could see you in that post, Michael

The slogan "Jews to Palestine" was commonly used by anti-Jewish Polish groups in the 1930s, well before the German invasion.

Strange I always thought that it was "Jews to Madagascar"

What the photograph shows is that the German invaders of Poland had adopted that Polish slogan, no doubt as a means of winning favour with the Polish population

So if it was the truth, why they are not wrote it it Polish? Or maybe they were just staging this photo for German propaganda, to be shown in Germany for Germans who well known that slogan on their own? Or it's too difficult to your one-way-focused imagination? And pretty strange way of "winning favour"... staged photo with German describtion on it, and mass executions on the other... very interesting.

as openly admitted by the leader of Armia Krajowa, Rowecki, was thoroughly anti-Semitic.

Have you seen that report, you are still building your case on, Michael? Or you just keep repeating what someone wrote, also without probably seing it at all?
Building your case on "interpretation" of one report, and as you have written in other post, "Polish clergyman" letter, is very curious. And very representative for the whole population. Maybe you could post English version of that report so I could compare the translation with Polish version? As I have proved in other post very often translation is meant interpretation, of course depends on who is translating and his goals are :roll:
Following your line of thought I would have recall Medison Square Garden meeting of 22,000 American nazis on 22 Feb 1939 denouncing America's Jews and later on defacing synagogues in the city with Nazi swastikas as the proof of Americans being overwhelmingly antisemitic nation.

The aim a keenly desired goal that their own governement had been unable to achieve, namely the expulsion of the Jews from Poland.

Do you have any governmental plans, memoranda etc to support that? Or again it's your opinion?

Best regards