Haim Arlozoroff (1899 — 1933) (Hebrew: חיים ארלוזורוב) was a Zionist leader, prior to Israel's modern statehood in the British Mandatory Region of Palestine, and head of the political department of the Jewish Agency. Arlosoroff was assassinated while walking on the beach in Tel Aviv in 1933.
Contents |
Dr.Chaim Arlosoroff (also spelled Arlozorov) was born in Romny, Ukraine on February 23, 1899. In the Ukraine, he was referred to by his family as Vitaly, which is the equivalent of the name Chaim in Russian. When living in Germany, however, he was commonly known as Viktor.[1] Dr. Arlosoroff's paternal grandfather was the Rabbi Eliezer Arlosoroff of Romny, an author of commentaries relating to religious issues and the Jewish Talmud.[2]
At the very young age of six years old, Arlosoroff became painfully aware of the harsh reality of anti-Semitism. In 1905, the Arlosoroff's family home in Romny was attacked in a violent pogrom.The hateful incident caused his immediate family to relocate across the German border in East Prussia. Seven years later the Arlosoroff family made Konigsberg, Germany their refuge.[3]
As a result of his family's exodus from Romny, Ukraine into Germany, Arlosoroff grew up a fluent speaker of the German language; in addition, he acquired understanding of Hebrew through a tutor provided for him at home by his parents.[4]
When the First World War began in 1914, the Arlosoroff family did not have German citizenship, and they were threatened with deportation. The family was eventually able to obtain leniency from the German authorities, and they were allowed to move to Berlin.[5] Because of the ongoing war, however, Chaim's father, Saul Arlosoroff, became cut-off from his Russian business contacts. When Saul returned to the Ukraine in order to resecure business connections, he was advised by authorities he could not go back to Germany until the war ended. The teenage Chaim Arlosoroff would never see his father again. Regrettably, before he could return to Berlin, Saul Arlosoroff passed away after contacting cholera.[6]
Later, being very interested in economics, Chaim Arlosoroff studied at the University of Berlin where he received a doctorate in that subject.[7] While he was attending the university, Arlosoroff wrote articles on Zionist matters, such as getting money to the settlers in Palestine, and planning a program of cooperation between Jews and Arabs.
While still in Germany, he became a key leader of Ha-Po'el ha-Tza'ir[8], translated "the Young Worker Party" in English, a party which attracted many intellectuals of the time. As a result of his party affiliation, Arlosoroff was appointed editor of "Die Arbeit", a journal in which his writings were first published.[9]
In 1919, Arlosoroff published the treastise "Jewish People's Socialism", his first major written contribution relating to a nationalistic hope for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel. [10]
Arlosoroff first visited the Holy Land in 1921. An anti-Jewish riot by Arabs broke out during his visit. This event helped draw Arlosoroff's focus to the need for better relations between Jews and Arabs.[11] Arlosoroff would come to the position that strength-based compromise with neighboring Arabs would not weaken or undermine efforts to establish a Jewish national homeland.[12] In addition, Arlosoroff would openly acknowledge the undeniable existence of an Arab national movement in Eretz Israel.[13]
Despite his young age, Arlosoroff rapidly rose to prominence in the Zionist movement. In the 1923 Zionist Congress, Arlosoroff was elected to the Zionist Action Committee. He was only 24 years old at the time. [14] Turning down an university position, he left Germany for the British Mandate of Palestine in 1924. In 1926 he was chosen to represent the yishuv at the League of Nations in Geneva.[15]
Arlosoroff's hope for peaceful cooperation and compromise with Arabs would be severely tested. In 1929, the consciously aggressive Betar Youth Movement, organized under Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Union of Revisionist Zionists, sought to assertively enforce and enlarge a Jewish presence in the proximity of the Wailing Wall.[16] The activities of Betar inflamed an explosive reaction from the Arab community, as it was perceived Muslim mosques on the adjacent Temple Mount had been dishonored. Violent riots ensued, and many Jewish civilians were killed as a result.[17] In lieu of inciting further Arab tensions, Arlosoroff strongly criticized the Revisionists for insensitively provoking the animosity.[18]
In 1930, Arlosoroff was influential in unifying the two major Zionist socialist political parties, the Polei Zion and the Hapoel Hatzair. This merger caused the establishment of the Mapai Labour Party.[19] Through the Mapai's political muscle, Arlosoroff received election as a member of the Zionist Executive at the 1931 Zionist Congress. In addition, he was naned Political Director of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, a prominent position he filled until his 1933 assassination.[20]
Arlosoroff was a close friend of the Jewish scientist and statesman, Haim Weizmann. Of all of Arlosoroff's Mapai Zionist contemporaries, Weizmann was considered to be the most politically moderate.[21]
On April 8, 1933, Arlosoroff organized a historic event at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on the Jewish Agency's behalf. The luncheon, attended by Weizmann and prominent Arab leaders in Palestine, would be the first time Jewish Zionists and key Arabs gathered together to help promote cooperative efforts between the two groups.[22] However, not everyone was pleased with Arlosoroff's vision for Jewish/Arab collaboration, nor the possibility of a bi-nationalistic future in Eretz Israel. After the luncheon, Arab radicals openly chastised Transjordan's Emir Abdullah and others who had attended.[23] Jewish opposition to the King David Hotel meeting also became apparent as the major party of religious Zionism, Mizrachi, demanded that Arlosoroff resign from his position at the Jewish Agency.[24] Some radicals in the Revisionist Movement went even further and questioned Arlosoroff's right to be alive.[25]
As the Jewish Agency's Political Director, Arlosoroff first believed that the British would help settling Jews in Palestine, so he worked with the British government which was in charge of running that territory. At the Mapai Labour Council occurring in January 1933, Arlosoroff strongly clashed with David Ben Gurion and other prominent Mapai leaders regarding whether or not the Zionists should work within the British government's infrastructure to help bring about Jewish statehood.[26] Arlosoroff warned his colleagues that if the Zionist movement maintained an isolationist policy with the British ruling authorities, the movement for an Arab state in Palestine would politically prevail with British officials and supplant the movement for a Jewish national homeland.[27]
Shortly after Arlosoroff's meeting with the Mapai Labour leaders, Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany.[28] As a result, Arlosoroff shifted his focus to the plight of German Jewry.
The Germany Arlosoroff coveted as a child growing up changed quickly and drastically upon Hitler's ascension to rule. In April 1933, the Nazi regime implemented the first of many anti-Semitic ordinances. The Nazis began by terminating all Jewish employees from German government positions.[29] Also at that time, Nazi officials decreed the Jews would not be permitted to flee Germany without a specially issued exit visa.[30]
Though Hitler hated Jewish people and wanted them expelled from Germany, in 1933 the Nazis were not willing to let a large number of Jewish refugees flee to the surrounding nations. This was because Reich officials were concerned that fleeing Jewish refugees would lend large numbers to a growing international movement for the economic boycott of Germany.[31] Adding to Hitler's worries, German financial advisers warned the Nazi government that a mass exodus of Jewish laborers from the German workforce would badly damage Germany's economic stability.[32] The Nazis needed a convenient solution to rid themselves of Jews without a political or economic backlash.[33]
In 1933, Arlosoroff and German Reich officials viewed Palestine as a land of opportunity for very different reasons. In the eyes of the Nazi leadership, the remote British-controlled territory of Palestine appeared to be a "dumping-ground" suitable to isolate thousands of anti-Hitler Jewish refugees from the world's political arena.[34] In addition, a financial agreement with Zionist leaders for the transfer of the refugees would help bolster Germany's struggling economy. For Arlosoroff and other Zionists, however, the potential mass transfer of Germany's Jews to Eretz Israel presented a historic opportunity to help guarantee the future establishment of a Jewish nation in the ancient Biblical Land of Promise.[35]
Arlosoroff came to feel that the British could not be trusted and that the Jews must risk angering them in order to rebuild their own homeland and save the Jews of Europe from the nationalist and authoritarian regimes under which they lived, especially in Nazi Germany.
At this point, Haim Arlozoroff visited Nazi Germany to negotiate the controversial Ha'avara Agreement with the Nazi government, an agreement which allowed for the emigration of Jews to Palestine along with most of their property. The Nazis were happy to get rid of Jews, but unwilling to allow them to take their property with them. Via this agreement, the Jews had to put their money into a special bank account. This money was then used to purchase German goods for export to Palestine (and other countries). The proceeds of the sale of these goods were given to the Jews on their arrival in Palestine. For the Nazis, this helped them get rid of Jews, while overcoming any attempts at a boycott of Nazi exports (especially from a moral point of view - it was the Jews themselves importing the goods). For the Zionist settlement, this huge influx of capital gave a much-needed economic boom in the midst of worldwide depression.
Approximately a year after Arlosoroff and Reich officials formalized the Ha'avara Agreement, Jewish Palestine had started to thrive economically. As a result, many new Jewish immigrants came to dwell in the Holy Land.[36] Prior to the Ha'avara Agreement, only several thousand Jewish workers had been immigrating to Palestine on a yearly basis. After the agreement was signed, however, over 50,000 new Jewish workers made Palestine their home within a two year period.[37] It should be noted German Jews made up only an approximate 20% of the first 50,000 new Jewish immigrants in Palestine.[38] The Ha'avara Agreement's economic impact had begun to stimulate Jewish immigration from many nations.
Ultimately, over 60,000 German Jews escaped persecution by the Nazis directly or indirectly through the Ha'avara Agreement.[39] In addition, the Ha'avara Agreement transferred an approximate $100 million to Jewish Palestine, helping establish an industrial infrastructure for the soon to be Jewish nation. Ha'avara Agreement funds were also utilized for purchasing land and developing many new Jewish settlements, which now help define the current boundaries of the State of Israel.[40]
On 16 June 1933, just two days after his return from negotiations in Germany, Haim Arlozoroff was murdered. He was killed while walking with his wife Sima on a beach in Tel Aviv. The death of Arlozoroff greatly aggravated political relations within the Zionist movement. Abba Ahimeir, the head of an activist group with fascist tendencies[41], the Brit HaBirionim, was charged by the Palestine Police Force with plotting the assassination. Ahimeir was also a leader of the nationalist Zionist Revisionist faction whose publication, "Hazit HaAm" continuously attacked the Labor movement and Zionist leaders, including Arlosoroff, calling him with names and stating that the Jewish people "will know how to react to such villains". Two rank-and-file Revisionists, Abraham Stavsky and Ze'evi Rosenblatt, were arrested as the actual murderers and were identified by Arlosoroff's widow. All three vehemently denied the accusation.
The district court acquitted Ahimeir and Rosenblatt but convicted Stavsky, who, however, was eventually acquitted by the Supreme Court for lack of corroborating evidence, as the law then required. The defense accused the police of manipulating the widow’s testimony and other evidence for political reasons, and expounded the theory that the murder was connected to an intended sexual attack on Sima Arlozoroff by two young Arabs. Stavsky later rose within Irgun ranks and was responsible for the procurement of the Irgun arms vessel known as the "Altalena." He was killed in the altercation involving the control of the arms with the newly established Israel Defense Forces on the Beach of Tel Aviv.
In addition to the theories that people connected to the revisionist movement are the perpetrators of murder and that it was an intended sexual attack by two Arabs there are theories connecting it to the Soviet and Nazi regimes. One involves the Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels: During the first world war, Magda Behrend, who later became the wife of Joseph Goebbels, met and became close friends with Lisa Arlosoroff, Haim Arlosoroff's sister. The nature of her relationship with Haim Arlozoroff is unknown. Magda married Goebbels on 19 December 1931, with Adolf Hitler as a witness. A year and a half later, Arlozoroff went to Germany to negotiate the Ha'avarah (transfer) agreement with high Nazi officials. The theory is that with Haim Arlosoroff's personal involvement in the negotiations, Goebbels took notice of his wife's former Jewish friend and sought to erase what might have been an embarrassment for the Goebbelses. Magda's former Jewish stepfather, Richard Friedländer, was arrested on Goebbels orders and died in the concentration camp in 1938. The Soviet connection was promoted by Shmuel Dothan in 1991 to counter what the Soviet considered as a global military plot against them.[42]
For years figures belonging to the right-wing claimed to be wrongfully accused by Mapai of being responsible for Arlosoroff's death. About fifty years after the murder, following the publication of a book on the assassination by Shabtai Teveth in 1982[43], the Israeli government, now led by Menachem Begin, established a formal investigative committee. As the first Israeli Prime Minister elected from the Revisionist movement, Begin had taken offense at a suggestion in Teveth's book that a Revisionist acquitted in court for Arlosoroff's murder may have actually been responsible after all.[44] The Judicial Commission of Enquiry was led by the former High court of Justice Judge David Bachor. Its purpose was to decide whether Rosenblatt and Stavsky were responsible for assassinating Arlosoroff, or not. The committee decided unanimously that Rosenblatt and Stavsky had nothing to do with the murder. The committee was inconclusive about the identity of the real murderers or whether or not the murder was politically motivated.
Arlozoroff is buried at the "Trumpeldor Cemetery" in Tel Aviv. Arlozoroff's memory is honored today by the many streets named after him throughout the towns of Israel and in the names of several places in Israel:[45] Kiryat Haim, a large neighborhood of Haifa, Giv'at Haim, a kibutz and Kfar Haim, a moshav. An 8-foot tall bronze monument dedicated to the legacy of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff has been erected at the Tel Aviv shoreline promenade where he was fatally wounded.
Edwin,Black,"The Transfer Agreement" New York, Carroll & Graf Pub.(2001)ISBN 0786708417