Haavara FAQs: How many German Jews were actually "saved" due to the Haavara Agreement?

How many German Jews were actually "saved" due to the Haavara Agreement?

Introduction: The Mental Gymnastic Game

This analysis challenges the commonly cited figures regarding the number of German Jews "saved" through the Haavara Agreement, adopting the perspective, for argument's sake, that Haavara was an effort to "save lives" before the Holocaust. We employ highly charged terms like "save" and "rescue" to describe these pre-calamity events, when the Holocaust wasn't in the picture until early 1942.

Reports from Zionist and official British Mandate primary sources provided widely varying counts, ranging from a minimum of 39,000 to a maximum of 60,000 German Jews allegedly "saved." To contextualize this maximum figure: it represented only 10% of Germany's Jewish population as of 1932, and just 10% of the total Jewish survivors from Germany and Austria.

However, closer scrutiny quickly reveals that the upper bound of 60,000 has been significantly overstated-- by at least 400%, and potentially by as much as 1,200%. In short, the numbers appear to have been manipulated and inflated.

It is crucial to note that the widely published figure of 60,000 lacks any verifiable primary source citations. We discovered the difficulty of tracing this number: historians have engaged in circular referencing without undertaking the rigorous examination of primary sources that our research has conducted.

Deconstructing the 60,000 Figure

In simple terms, Zionist calculations deliberately merged two distinct groups of immigrants:

Those who immigrated via the Haavara asset transfer mechanism (primarily individuals who automatically qualified for entry with P£1,000 or more, known as the Capitalists) and their dependents.

Those who immigrated based on the Labor Certificates visa program, whose entry was granted by the British Mandate. In fact, the British instituted an affirmative action program that favored German Jewry because they knew the Zionists favored Polish Jewry over them.

To be clear, individuals with the financial means (Capitalists) could have easily immigrated with or without the Haavara Agreement. The Capitalist visa program in Palestine pre-dated Haavara, existing since 1929, and numerous countries were willing to accept these wealthy immigrants based on their liquid assets. Yehuda Bauer, Israel's leading Holocaust historian, supports this view in Jews for Sale?, p. 17. Capitalist visas were, and remain, a highly sought-after immigration route. This fact is significant, especially considering that Hitler kept Europe's doors open for Jews to leave until as late as 1941.

The justification offered by the Zionists for lumping these groups together is the claim that Haavara-related investments boosted Palestine’s economic capacity, thereby "saving" all German immigrants who arrived. If this highly dubious argument were accepted, then by the same logic, the 400,000 Jews who immigrated from Eastern and Central Europe during the 1930s and 40s could also be categorized as "saved" due to the same economic factors.

In any case, this farce of an argument was first brought to our attention when we read what Baruch Vladeck wrote, who was editor of the Jewish Forward when it was an anti-Zionist publication, in January 1936:

"But," say the defenders of the Transfer Agreement, we can't stop to discuss moral effects, We must save the Jews in Germany, and the Transfer is a way out." Let's look into the practical value of the [Haavara] Agreement. We are told that over 30,000 Jews were rescued by the Transfer Agreement. That, to put it bluntly, is a lie. Not 30,000 but between 4 and 5 thousand were settled in Palestine by means of the Transfer, and these were not "saved." NO! Retorts by B. C. Vladeck

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How To Determine How Many Were "Saved"?

To assess who saved who, it became imperative to figure out how many of those "saved" gained entry based on their assets (a.k.a. Capitalists) vs. those who were saved by the British Mandate's Labor Certificates visa programs, plus their respective dependants who immigrated along with them (dependants were 56% of those who immigrated). British Mandate's primary sources provided such data for most of the seven years, and the Jewish Agency's publications were used to fill in the missing data (for years 1933, 1934, and 1939). Identifying how many in these categories will allow us to verify two critically important data points:

A) How much money was funneled into the Jewish Agency's drained coffers?

B) How many Labor Certificate visas (grants from the British) were assigned to German Jews by the Jewish Agency from the overall Labor Certificates pool?

This information will help us to determine whether the Zionist leadership prioritized saving the poor German Jews who didn't qualify as Capitalists (basically those who didn't have P£1,000).

Based On What Historians Reported, How Many Were "saved"?

That being said, before we share calculation mythedology, let us share what other historians have reported, and at the end of this section, we shall compare what we found with what they've reported. As you digest what the historians have reported, please keep in mind that none of them reported how their figures were calculated:

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To this date, there is no definitive number of those who were "saved": the official Zionist sources cited is 60,000 (although British Mandate's primary sources reported a total of 49,363 between 1931 & 1945), but JVL cites 55,000, Francis Nicosia cites 53,000, both Adam Hofri & Avraham Barkai cited 52,000, Adam Tooze reported 50,000 (p. 90), the British Mandate reported 47,133 (which seems to be the most accurate, see Statistical Abstract of Palestine for 1937 on p. 36 and 1943 on p. 19), Aviva Halamish reported 46,741 (see Table 7.2, note that statistics for the year 1932 was excluded, p. 144), Areih Tartakower / Kurt Grossmann cited 45,000, Abraham J Edelheit reported between 20,000 to 50,000, Fawzi Abu-Diab reported a total of 39,137 (pay attention how Fawzi cited the Jewish Agency as one of his primary sources), and the Jewish Agency reported 43,169 in 1944.

In our opinion, we found that the MOST CREDIBLE numbers were reported by the British Mandate Palestine Blue Books and in the Statistical Abstract of Palestine for 1937, 1943, and 1945; as we see it, those are the primary sources, and where the data is missing, we shall rely on the Jewish Agency's publications. It should be noted that all others failed to cite the source of the 60,000. As we can see, inflating the number will make a big difference.

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Tom Segev reported 20,000 (The Seventh Million, p. 22); it seems he reported who used the Capitalist Certificate visa program. Edwin Black reported 20,000, too (The Transfer Agreement, p. 379). Similarly, Yehuda Bauer reported that a third of those who immigrated arrived because of the Capitalist Certificate visa program. Based on our calculations (as we shall prove shortly), they must have included Capitalists' dependants in their figures; else their numbers will be way off. On this note, it is worthwhile sharing Mr. Bauer's argument concerning those who financed their immigration (a.k.a Capitalists). Honestly, this was chilling to read, especially when an ardent Zionist like Mr. Bauer wrote it:

"The question arose then and must arise today whether, without Ha’avarah, there would have been a massive German Jewish immigration into Palestine. After all, only one third of these immigrants were capitalists, and some, or perhaps many of them, would have come without Ha'avarah. On balance, however, the influx of capitalists was apparently a factor in encouraging immigration of other German Jews as well.

The arguments with which the proponents of Ha'avarah supported the project were often a mixture of the logical and the disingenuous. Thus, leading [Jewish] Agency politicians explained that the expansion of Ha'avarah to countries other than Palestine, which the Nazis had agreed to in part, was not controlled by them at all but by another organization, Intria. In fact, Intria was chaired by Siegfried Moses, one of the heads of the Ha'avarah organization. Also, while the leaders of Ha'avarah played down the damage done to the boycott movement by the agreement with Germany, they simultaneously played up their sabotage of the boycott in their negotiations with the Germans. Their campaign started with efforts in 1933 to persuade Consul Wolff in Jerusalem to give up his support of Sam Cohen and side with the Jewish Agency instead; if wanted to fight the boycott, they argued, Sam Cohen was not the right person to facilitate that fight. The campaign continued in the repeated interviews that agency leaders had in Germany with German officials."(Jews For Sale?, p. 17)

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 Aviva Halamish reported 2,500 (see p. 137). Without dependants, she arrived at 5,000 maximum with dependants (it seems every immigrant brought with him/her on average one dependent, which we've verified from the primary sources, too). Aviva could be correct, but we couldn't verify her number from other sources, although Mr. Vladeck (editor of The Forward) reported something similar in early 1936. This number should be avoided (unless supporting sources are provided), especially when she cited a bigger number of 2,985 Capitalists (for Category A) just for the year 1936 (see Table 7.5). Aviva's paper (which we relied on when we wrote our research) contains several inconsistencies within the same paper and with the primary sources. For example, she cited that 60,000 German Jews immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s (see p. 123 & 143), which contradicted the final tally she reported in Table 7.2 (p. 144), also in Table 7.5 (p. 145), she noted that 8,180 German Jews immigrated to Palestine in 1936. Still, in Table 7.2 (p. 143), she reported 7,468 for the same statistic. Also note that her source for the 60,000 figure was Walter Laqueur (in The Holocaust Encyclopedia, p. 522). Still, when the page she cited is examined, you'll see that his final tally was 46,000, not 60,000, plus he was referring to Greater Germany.

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Areih Tartakower & Kurt Grossmann reported in The Jewish Refugee (which was written in 1944 during WWII and released by the World Jewish Congress -- a Zionist organization) on page 384 a total of 44,509 German Jewish immigrants to Palestine during the 1930s which they have broken down as follows: 16,526 gained entry via the Capitalist Certificate visa program (37.1%), 15,885 via the Labor Certificates Visa program (35.6%), 12,095 gained entry because they were dependants (27.9%). After examining the Jewish Agency's figures for 1933 & 1934, we have concluded that the authors must have used the JA publications since the numbers match entirely. Therefore, their statistics for Capitalists and Labor must include dependants since JA reported them as such. That said, the data was valid until the first quarter of 1939, and to fill in the gap, they had to rely on the Survey of Palestine, p. 204.

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Fawzi Abu-Diab reported a total of 39,137. Fawzi cited the Jewish Agency and the British Mandate as sources. Fawzi's figures jived with what JA had reported in 1947.

Sources And Calculation Methodology

To calculate how many Jews were saved due to the Haavara Agreement, it became clear that we needed to identify two critical statistics:

i) How many German Jews immigrated to Palestine and, most importantly,:

ii) Based on what immigration visa program they gained entry (i.e., Capitalist, Labor, Student, Dependant, etc.).

Since the numbers reported by most historians are all over the place, often not sourced from primary sources, and all circularly cited each other, we've determined that we must rely on the British Mandate & Jewish Agency primary sources. We found that the Mandate reported numbers between 49,712  (see column Q) and 46,543 (see column D) German Jews who immigrated to Palestine between 1933 and 1939 (see column Q in the spreadsheet), which included Jewish immigrants from Danzig and Austria after Anschluss (marked with a brown background; see images of the primary sources for the details). To our surprise, the Jewish Agency reported a total of German Jews that was close to British figures (see column R, 43,286 = 39,066 + 4,220 travelers; here is another JA source that reported something similar during WWII, too. Although we found what we precisely needed from the British Mandate's Palestine Blue Books (see columns X to AE), the data for 1933, 34 & 39 is unavailable (if you have access to them, please let us know). That said, we found the relevant missing data from the Jewish Agency's publications, which we consider the second best after the Mandate's official publications. We found that 9,415 German Jews immigrated via the Capitalist Certificate visa program (see column X). Capitalists were those immigrants who proved they had at least P£1,000; they gained automatic immigration visas (a.k.a. certificate).

Those Capitalists were accompanied by 9,243 dependants (see column Y) for a total of 18,698. Note that:

A) our Capitalist and Labor Certificates dependants' data are missing for 1939 (marked with a yellow background in the spreadsheet), which could be inferred from the Survey of Palestine, p. 204. The American Jewish Year Book for 1940 reported 9,515 German & Austrian Jews immigrated to Palestine in 1939 (57.85% of the total of 16,405), but 1,019 Jews emigrated in 1939 (we don't know how many of those were German). Therefore, what we inferred from the Survey of Palestine seems to be accurate (see American Jewish Year Book, p. 627 - 630).

B) The Mandate didn't provide a breakdown of the immigration data by country of origin and religion for years below 1936, and for 1936 and above, Jews were the immigrants at an average rate of 99%. Therefore, it was safe to assume that 1% of those German immigrants were not Jewish (mostly German Templars of Sarona, Wilhelma, and Umm al-'Amad).

C) Since the rise of Hitler in early 1933, the British instituted a rule that favored German Jewry when GB demanded that 10% of the total Labor Certificates grants must be allotted to German Jewry (a kind of affirmative action).

D) Also note that we discovered that one of every seven who immigrated to Palestine from Germany wasn't a German citizen (most of whom were Polish Jews; Sam Cohen, the architect of Haavara V1, was one of them), and we strongly suspect that the Nazis excluded those from the Haavara Agreement.

It appears that Tom Segev, Edwin Black, and Yehuda Bauer have reported a similar number of Capitalists; they reported 20,000, which must have included dependants (see The Seventh Million, p. 22, The Transfer Agreement, p. 379, and Jews For Sale?, p. 17). Also note that our numbers were close to what Mr. Tartakower & Mr. Grossman (who both wrote The Jewish Refugee in 1944 during WWII for the World Jewish Congress, see p. 384); the discrepancy was related to the fact that they reported data up to the first quarter of 1939; the rest could be taken from Survey of Palestine, p. 204. Based on our analysis, they must have used the Jewish Agency's publications to make their report (their numbers matched what the Jewish Agency reported for 1933 & 1934).

Vital Statistics

 Since those who used Labor Certificates to immigrate (along with their dependants and from all nations) numbered 90,540 (see Column N), and since 16,832 German Jews immigrated to Palestine because the Jewish Agency assigned them Labor Certificates (sum columns Z & AA), then that implies 18.6% (a.k.a. the "saving rate") were saved because the Jewish Agency assigned their head of household Labor Certificates.

 If non-German citizens (who immigrated to Palestine from Germany) were excluded from the calculation, the rate would drop to 15.8%.

 If those who gained entry based on British affirmative action (meaning the Jewish Agency played no role in saving) were excluded along with the non-Germans who immigrated out of Germany, the "saving rate" drops to 8.11%. Thus, Zionists were responsible for saving 6,611 German Jews whom the British affirmative action played no role in saving. It is very telling how German Jews were assigned labor certificates by the Jewish Agency at a rate much less than Romanian Jews, who were comparable in size and who were not being persecuted.

If you care, we asked Google's AI Gemini to go over our numbers and to reflect on our earlier analysis. Click here for the details.

Analysis

 As you contemplate the earlier statistics, it is worth noting that:

A) the British Mandate left it to the Jewish Agency how to distribute those Labor Certificate visas as it saw fit, and based on that, the Zionist leadership should be judged,

B) the British Mandate made it four times easier for German Jews to immigrate,

C) It was British Mandate who demanded that between 10% of all Labor Certificates must be allotted to German Jews (Palestine as a Destination for Jewish Immigrants by Aviva Halamish, p. 126, 129, 146 and in JA's 1933 submission to the League of Nations, p. 5 ), and despite that Zionist leaders tightened the selection criteria for those poor German Jews compared with eastern European Jews.

D) Haavara should not be credited with saving those who immigrated via the Capitalist Certificates visa program. Those who would have immigrated with or without the Haavara Agreement way before Hitler rose to power; thus, it was their money that saved them. It should be noted that this visa program was created after the riots in Hebron of 1929.

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Our calculations have a profound ramification: This data indicates that the Jewish Agency must have assigned to German Jews fewer Labor Certificates than was previously disclosed, and the actual number of souls saved (16,832) due to the Jewish Agency's selection criteria; two-thirds of those were saved due to the British Mandate affirmative action which demanded that up to 10% of those who immigrated due to Labor Certificates (who numbered 9,054 out of 16,832) must be allotted to German Jews.

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Therefore, 10% (9,054 German Jews) would have been saved with or without Haavara, and Zionists should not be credited with saving. Actually, this British affirmative action was instituted before Haavara, and the British made such a demand because they knew Zionists would not favor them. Thus, saving 6,611 German Jews by Zionists over seven years is a mediocre number, especially when we factor in that Romanian Jews were granted more Labor Certificates during the same period, although they weren't living in danger. The same logic applies to Greece's small Jewish community, which received comparable Labor Certificates as the German Jewry!

If you care, here is how Google Gemini unpacked the cited facts. It did a much better job articulating our research. Also, here is another take, but from a different AI session.

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To put things into perspective, please keep in mind that

i) it was the British people who saved 10,000 German Jewish children (within a month) after the Kristallnacht pogrom. You would think the Zionist leadership appreciated what the British people did in a hurry. Think again!

ii) Dr. Rudolf Kastner also claimed that he saved 1,600 Jews, but that was at the cost of 434,000 Jews. Then we have to ask: who speaks for the dead? Maybe Hannah Arendt!

iii) As you digest the earlier facts, please always keep in mind that Hitler kept the doors open until late 1941 for Jews to leave, and he was willing to ship them anywhere on luxury liners at his own expense.

iv) Thus, the concept of "saving lives" shouldn't be even contemplated until the Kristallnacht pogrom in late 1938.

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As we attempted to validate our data and calculation method, it was brought to our attention that Prof. Aviva Halamish (whom we relied on for our research) had calculated the "saving rate." However, she excluded dependants for some reason. She reported an average "saving rate" of 25% between 1933 and 1937 (note that she included non-German Jews who immigrated to Palestine from Germany), which is close to what we found. Ms. Halamish's numbers (although for a much smaller time window) increased our confidence in our calculations and methodology.

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To paint the Haavara Agreement more favorably, it is common for Zionists and Israeli historians (including Wikipedia's Israeli editors) to state that Haavara was responsible for "saving" 60,000 German Jews. On the other hand, when the primary sources are examined (including the Jewish Agency's Statistical Handbook For Jewish Palestine For 1947), it became clear that the total German Jewish immigration (including those who immigrated before and after Haavara) was close to 50,000. Most historians who cited such a statistic have quoted Edwin Black, and it seems he was the earliest to report such a number (as early as 1983). On the other hand, when we examined what Mr. Black wrote, he never cited his sources (The Transfer Agreement, p. 379). To our surprise, the Jewish Agency's figures (reported way after WWII ended in 1947) were way below the 50,000 figures, even when illegal immigrants (a.k.a. Ma'apilim) were factored in. For example, the Jewish Agency reported a total of 39,066 German Jews on p. 104 between 1933 and 1939 (Austrians were added after the 1938 Anschluss with Germany). It appears that the Jewish Agency excluded non-German citizens (who immigrated to Palestine from Germany) and also didn't include travelers (who later applied to become immigrants, mostly Capitalists) and reported on them separately. German travelers who applied to become immigrants numbered 4,220 in the 1930s, and once they were factored in, that brought the total to 43,286 (=39,066 + 4,220; a similar number appeared in a similar JA publication in 1943 as well). It seems that JA's figures were on the low side because non-German citizens were excluded, and the British Mandate's figures were higher because they included them, besides adding travelers and illegals who were legalized over time.

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Although the Haavara Agreement had no role in saving the illegal immigrants from Germany and Austria, for the sake of argument, even when they are added, the final tally would be 47,188 (=39,066 + 4,220 + 1,715 + 2,187). It should be emphasized that the British Mandate usually added illegals to their official records (the same logic was applied to travelers, as we have shown earlier), which explains why the Mandate's figures often were higher than the Jewish Agency's numbers. To make a point, we added the illegals to point out that even when the official figures are stretched to favor Zionists, and double counting is introduced, the 60,000 figure is way off the chart. Therefore, we ask: Where did this number come from, and why was it inflated? Why have we all been citing unverified figures?

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Much time and effort have been spent tracing the source of this mysterious and widely cited figure, but its sources have not been found. That said, Mr. Walter Laqueur's famous map (in The Holocaust Encyclopedia, p. 521) for German Jews' migration has been widely promoted, and that may have contributed to the widespread usage of these statistics. On the other hand, Mr. Laqueur referred to Greater Germany (which included Austria and Czechoslovakia, see p. 522); most importantly, his numbers don't add up to 60,000. Ironically, Walter reported a figure of 46,000 (on p. 522), which is close to our calculation. Anyhow, it is worth noting that even if the actual number was 60,000 and the difference of 13,000+ was all saved due to being assigned Labor Certificates, it would increase the saving rate from 15% to 33%. However, that still doesn't look good, especially considering that it was the British who saved 9,054 of them.

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 Also, Zionists and Israeli historians insist on lumping all immigrants who immigrated as Capitalists, their dependants, students, non-Germans who immigrated to Palestine out of Germany, and those in Category D into the "saving rate," which is a farce of an argument. Zionist leaders had no control over those; they had complete control over who was assigned a labor certificate. Based on such criteria, Zionist leadership should be judged (especially when they saw the knife hanging over Germany's Jews). Mr. Bauer also presented a compelling argument: those Capitalists and their dependants would have been saved in Palestine or other countries with or without Haavara; the Capitalist visa program was as standard then as it is now. Most importantly, based on our calculations, we have found that 60% of the Capitalists were not German citizens, who were saved because of their money, not due to any help from Haavara. Concerning Category D, the Jewish Agency had no authority over who qualified as a dependant. It was the British who approved the dependants' visas.

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All these facts explain why two-thirds of those poor German Jews who applied to immigrate to Palestine (via the Labor Certificates visa program) were turned down (Abraham Margaliot, p. 561-562). To put things in another perspective, we've found that 246,000 German Jews (who were primarily penniless by then) left Germany within Haavara's seven years of life (59% of them left in under 10 months in 1939). Once we excluded those who went to Palestine, that was over 14 times what Zionists have allotted to heads of households, Labor Certificate visas to German Jews (Jews For Sale?, p. 17, 35). Based on the earlier facts and logical arguments, we are forced to ask: If Zionist leaders were "keen" on saving German Jews, why did they provide poor German Jews with a few Labor Certificates over eight years? Did Zionist leaders have cynical motives for providing as few Labor Certificates as possible? 

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Zionists' Cruel Selection Criteria

Besides assigning as few Labor Certificates as possible to poor German Jews, Zionist leaders also applied cruel selection criteria that ended up rejecting two-thirds of those who applied. See for yourself (from Zionist sources) how Zionist leaders have selectively chosen which German Jews could be "saved" and who were deemed as suitable to the "Jewish state." Keep in mind this was applied nine years ahead of the Final Solution:

Abraham Margaliot (who is an Israeli Holocaust historian), p. 559 & 660

Here also is a snippet of Lenni Brenner's description of Zionists' cruel selection criteria that were applied to German Jews, which was extracted from his must-read book Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. Pay attention to how we also added the Israeli source that Mr. Brenner cited; this is quite chilling to read, primarily when it was written by an Israeli:


Abraham Margaliot (who is an Israeli Holocaust historian), p. 561 & 562

Here is how David Yisraeli cited the Zionist Archives' description of how German Jewry was selected for immigration to Palestine. The relevant portion was highlighted in orange:

We were shocked to discover that the renowned banking family of Hamburg, the Warburgs, financed the resettlement of twice as many as German and Austrian Jews as those who immigrated to Palestine. The Warburg family saved almost 90,000 German and Austrian Jews between 1933 and late 1941 in a little-known program called Hilfsverein, which Zionists fought with tooth and nail.

Abraham Margaliot

Just in case you think this cruel selection criteria was over after the "Jewish state" was created, then please think twice. The sick and the handicapped Jews who survived the holocaust were left for the Gentiles to take care of, especially after Germany paid Israel billions of dollars in reparations (in today's dollars) in the early 1950s (a.k.a. Haavara V2.0) :

Here is a thought experiment: Assume we are living in Budapest, Hungary, between March and June 1944, and the gate of hell opened up, and only those with immigration certificate visas to Palestine could be saved: Do you honestly think the Zionist leadership handed those coveted immigration certificates to Jews irrespective of their ideological and party affiliations? What if we tell you this hypothetical scenario already happened eight decades ago during WWII? Spoiler Alert: We are not only referring to the infamous Kastner's Train; there was a far more sinister one. This cruel selection criterion was embedded in the Zionist project since its inception. Therefore, not conflating Judaism with Zionism was at the core of Zionism from day one.

Here is one of the most infamous EVIL letters to have been written. At the peak of the calamity in early 1943, Apolinary Hartglas of the so-called Rescue Committee not only recommended writing off European Jewry as dead, thus starving rescue funds, but he also emphasized how the Jewish tragedy must be exploited and weaponized to build the future "Jewish state." Ultimately, he emphasized his stringent selection criteria. On the 2nd image (pp. 100), Mr. Hartglass reiterated Ben-Gurion's views (which he made four years earlier) once he heard the British saved 10,000 German Jewish children (a.k.a. Kindertransport) after the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938. We have no idea if Hartglas' recommendations were officially adopted by the Jewish Agency Executive (JAE), but what was implemented, in the following eight decades, was in sync with the confidential letter. Our analysis becomes evident once you examine how rescue funds were allocated, starved, and spent during WWII; you might lose your religion. Fasten your seat belts; you have been warned:



Sourced from The Seventh Million by Tom Segev, pp. 99-101. It is worth noting to see how Mr. Hartglas' Wikipedia Page has been completely sanitized, although his letter is infamous among Israeli historians; Dina Porat (on pp. 245-6) and Yoav Gelber (on pp. 591) cited something similar! The Hasbarah police have been working diligently.

God forbid, if you made it all the way down here and you are still not convinced, we urge you to watch this excellent video summarizing our earlier arguments in under 15 minutes. Trust us, it will be worth your time:

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