On 25 August 1933, bourgeoise Jews who were part of Zionist German Jews held a talk with Nazis and reached an agreement - Haavara Agreement. It means transfer agreement. It was a major factor in making possible the migration of approximately 60,000 German Jews to Palestine in 1933–1939. This is a lesser-known fact.
The agreement enabled rich Jews fleeing persecution under the new Nazi regime to transfer some portion of their assets to British Mandatory Palestine. Emigrants sold their assets in Germany to pay for essential goods (manufactured in Germany) to be shipped to Mandatory Palestine. This pact between Nazis and rich jews was so controversial that it was opposed by Jewish leaders within and outside the Zionist movement itself.
For rich jews in Germany, the agreement offered a way to leave an increasingly hostile environment in Germany; for the Yishuv, the new Jewish community in Palestine, it offered access to both immigrant labour and economic support; for the Germans, it facilitated the emigration of German Jews while breaking the anti-Nazi boycott of 1933, which had mass support among European Jews and was thought by the German state to be a potential threat to the German economy.
(Francis R. Nicosia -The Third Reich & the Palestine question)
Events leading to Haavara Agreement
In the Reichstag general elections of 1932, the Nazi party got great shares of votes but they didn't have a majority to form a stable government. The coalition government fell, Under pressure from politicians, industrialists and others, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. This event is popularly known as - seizure of power. In few months, except for churches and the army, everything was under their control.
it was during this time Nazi coalition started looking at answering the "Jewish question" - they encouraged expulsion and the encouragement of voluntary emigration of jews. Widespread civil persecution of German Jews began. Meanwhile, in Mandatory Palestine, a growing Jewish population (174,610 in 1931, rising to 384,078 in 1936) was acquiring land and developing the structures of a future Jewish state (Israel) despite opposition from the native population.
The discriminative immigration
Under the agreement, Jews emigrating from Germany could use their assets to purchase German-manufactured goods for export, thus salvaging their personal assets during emigration. This provided a substantial export market for both nazi Germany and British Palestine. By the time the program ended with the start of WW2, the total had risen to more than half a billion USD (by today's worth).
Emigrants with a capital of 10000 pounds (roughly INR 59 Lakh today)could move to Palestine despite severe British restrictions on Jewish immigration under an immigrant investor program similar to the modern EB-5 visa. Yes, the allies did know about Jewish persecution in Germany and remained silent on it. Initially, Hitler seemed indifferent to the economic details of the plan, but he supported it in the period from September 1937 to 1939 - because it involves a lot of money!
Fall of the Soviet Union and Exodus of Russian Jews
When the Soviet Union began to collapse, American immigration policy prevented a large number of Russian Jews from coming to the United States. Instead, they chose Israel because of liberal immigration laws. Anyone with Jewish grandparents on either of their parents' side was considered jew. Between 1990 and 1997, more than 710,000 Soviet immigrants landed in the country, boosting the working-age population by 15 percent. Around 60 percent of the new arrivals had a college education, versus 30 to 40 percent of the native population. Immigration, in general, is good for growth. When those immigrants are engineers, managers, and college professors, it's even better for growth. The Russian influx gave Israel a booster shot of both bodies and brains.
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