All language subtitles for The Transfer Agreement, VO by Edwin Black (C-SPAN2, 2009.10.09)The Pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine

between Hitler's government and a group
of Zionist leaders in 1933.

The agreement called for the transfer of
55 ,000 Jews and $100 million to

Palestine in exchange for calling off a
planned economic boycott of Nazi Germany

by Jewish organizations.

Barnes & Noble booksellers in Rockville,
Maryland, host the hour -long event.

So we're here with Edwin Black and...

Most people know you for some of the
bestsellers, some of the books that

Mitchell has just referred to. IBM, The
Holocaust, War Against the Weak,

Internal Combustion, Banking on Baghdad.
All of these books, bestsellers, were

written, however, in the 21st century.

You have, I understand, somewhere around
69 different editions published in

about 14 languages in 61 countries. The
question that we're focusing on today...

was actually your first book called The
Transfer Agreement.

The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between
the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine.

This book was published in 1984, so it's
been 25 years ago.

And at the time that it came out, I
remember there was a tremendous amount

media attention.

And also, it was a very controversial
book. It was one that there was a

tremendous amount of discussion about
it. And so that's really what brings us

here today.

Let's go first to that issue. What was
it about the publication of this book

the thesis that you were putting forth
that garnered so much attention and so

much controversy?

The story of the transfer agreement is
the story of the pact between the

Zionists and the Nazis that was launched
in the first weeks of the Third Reich

in 1933.

It began in the spring of 1933 and was
consummated in August of

1933.

Most people don't know that when Hitler
came to power, Jews actually fought back

and they fought back hard and they
fought back immediately.

Hitler came to power on January 30th,
1933.

The first concentration camp was
actually opened up then

between March 8th and March 10th of
1933.

The anti -Jewish laws followed shortly
thereafter.

And by March 27th of 1933, the Jewish
war veterans...

had actually started a series of
international protests and

marches. And on March 27th of 1933, one
million

protesters jammed Madison Square Garden
and there were boycott and protest

movements all over the globe, led by the
Jews, but certainly

involving...

It's certainly involving the interfaith
community, the labor unions, anyone who

wanted to profit any expense and to
protest the Nazi regime.

So we're talking about 10, 12 years
before the onset of World War II.

World War II began at 6 a .m. on
September 30, 1939.

So Hitler came to power in 1933, the
Nuremberg Laws in 1935, Kristallnacht in

1938, the war in 1939.

And most of the genocidal period, the so
-called final solution, I get begun

in the summer of 1941, the fall of 1941,

and then commencing at full speed in
1943, 4 and 5.

So what designists did...

was they realized their protest was
fruitless. But think about it, let's be

we define Zionists. Those are the people
who, what were they doing?

The Zionists?

I believe that most people don't know
what the word Zionism means. Well,

at the end of the 19th century, there
were a number of stick movements across

Europe. There was the concept of
Armenian nationalism. There was East

nationalism. The Ottoman Empire was
falling apart. There was a wide group of

people who were seeking to self -govern.

One of these many groups was the Jewish
people, and

Zionism is nothing more than Jewish
nationalism.

So we're talking the Jewish
nationalists.

The Jewish nationalists, the Zionists,
seeking to legally organize themselves

into a state under international law,
which was done through the League of

Nations, sought to move the Jews who
were persecuted, especially in

Europe, into Jewish Palestine. Most
people today think of Palestinians as

but the entire world.

In 1933, he thought the word Palestinian
meant Jewish Zionist. The Jewish Agency

for Palestine, the Palestine Post,
Jewish Palestine. That's why the

the book is Jewish Palestine, because
that was the body of the Jews in

what became the state of Israel, Jewish
Palestine, and the term for the Jews.

internationally recognized in ordinary
parlance and officially was Palestinian.

So they used to refer to Jews as
Palestinians.

So these Zionists who were the advocate
then for a Jewish homeland... They saw

the end before anyone saw the end.

And they said the only thing that we can
do...

to save a remnant, because they saw it
coming. They knew the history of the

Jews, the recent history and the distant
history. They saw it coming,

and they made a deal with the Reich to
transfer out the Jews

of Nazi Germany and other parts of
Europe into Palestine.

Now, how are you going to do that?

That's going to be impossible because
who's running Palestine?

Palestine is being run by the British.

It is being run under the so -called
mandate system, which means the League

Nations mandated Palestine, Turkish
territory before that, to be a

Jewish homeland.

But there were rules in place.

And the rules, and this is important,
the rules were that Jews could not enter

Palestine.

without 5 ,000 in cash or 1 ,000 British
pounds.

And this was called the so -called
capitalist immigration certificate.

Now, how does a Jew leave Nazi Germany,
where there are currency restrictions,

where he can bring a Reichsmark out of
Germany, how does that Jew get into

Palestine as a so -called official
refugee?

The answer is... The Germans concocted
the idea, and the Zionists concocted it

with them, that German goods would be
sold.

And as German goods were sold, money
would be produced.

A Jew in Germany, in this complex
arrangement, would take his personal

possessions and assets and put them in a
special bank.

And that bank was called Paltroy.

Then a second bank was set up called the
Anglo -Palestine Bank, and that bank

was in Palestine.

The money would be German bank.

The Nazi goods would be sold by the
Zionist organization across the Middle

and especially in Palestine.

When the goods were sold, they generated
revenue, which went into the Anglo

-Palestine Bank. The Anglo -Palestine
Bank then provided the money for the

to bypass the currency restriction that
the british has imposed and they would

come in in the process the nazis could
restore their economy economy

the nazis could break the boycott
because you could not transfer a jew

by selling the goods and at the same
time boycott the goods the

of jewish palestine built up pipes

Steel, breweries, homes, cars, buses,
all of these things German made.

And I wondered when I first went to
Israel, why are there so many Mercedes

running around? Everybody asks that
question. We all ask that question. And

that's where I really start.

Is that what got you interested in the
topic?

No, what actually got me interested in
it, we'll actually get to that in a

little bit, it was the Martian in
Skokie. What did you talk about there?

ahead. So I wrote this book and
explained how it happened. And in the

25 years ago, I was the first one to
talk about the economic consequences of

Holocaust. At that time... People said,
why are you talking assets?

They were still trying to comprehend the
enormity, the scope of the bloodshed.

How many people died?

How many people were gassed? How many
trains were there?

People were not talking about money.

That dominates the conversation as
assets. I want my back. I want my

back. I want all these things back. But
in those days, it was all almost

blasphemous. It was a few decades ahead
of its time to discuss the money

consequences. But I realized that the
scope of the bloodshed was in many ways

linked to the economic impact of the
Holocaust.

In addition, I was the first one to use
the word Nazi and Zionist in the same

sentence.

Now, it is today everywhere, especially
by the enemies of the Jewish state.

But defective at that time, it was
completely unexpected.

And so that's why the book was extremely
controversial.

That's why the media jumped, went on a
giant tour.

And even though I did my best to convey
the information as best as I could, it

was quite shocking. And so we have...

people hiring psychologists to go on
television and analyze me.

Did people assume you were seeing the
Nazis and the Zionists, and that was

of what then was so disturbing? Well,
they were trying to say that I was

the Jews.

Right.

For their very own fate, instead of
being this whole elaborate theme, and in

terms of a rescue.

In fact, I had a problem with my own
parents, who were survivors from the

to Treblinka and forest fires, who
thought that I was perhaps revealing

something that should not be revealed.

I do remember the storm of controversy,
and there were articles coming out and

this and that, and yet here we are
today, and it seems as if the Jewish

community is now much more open to this
situation. Well, they're open to it

because, of course, I've been
established in the Jewish community. My

credentials of fighting for Jewish
causes and for justice in Holocaust

is now well established.

Back when I wrote this book originally,
the American Zionist Organization of

America canceled the publication of
their

magazine, the American Zionist, on press
because they had a cover story about

this topic. Today, Mort Klein of the

VOA has read the book and endorsed it as
sensitive.

So do you want to share with us what
took you into this line of research?

was your first book, right?

Book. And prior to that, I'd been a
local investigative reporter. I had done

some international undercover
investigations.

I was involved in an undercover
operation on the left slave state in the

of the Indian Ocean.

And when I did that...

My agent, an agent approached me from
William Morris and said, we want you to

write a book for us. What are the top
five books you'd like to write? And I

said, well, the one book, I gave him
ideas.

I said, the one book that is too hot to
handle is the Transfer Agreement.

What really motivated me to be involved
in this was the Skokie March.

Tell us about that. Well, I think I was
fundamentally naive.

I fundamentally, I was in such a
cloistered, typical

Jewish neighborhood environment that I
couldn't understand how Jews could

operate against their perceived self
-interest.

And during the Skokie March, I
interviewed the Jewish attorney for the

I said, how can you do this? And at that
time, I was schooled by a professor,

Byron Sherwin of Spurters College, who
said there are many things we can't

understand. And he told me there was
something called the transfer agreement.

And finally, I assembled a team of 20 or
30 historians and Holocaust

survivors and children of Holocaust
survivors.

There was no second generation movement.

We went into five or six countries.

I accumulated all of the information.

Some of it was not even in the archive.
It was under people's deaths. It was

being protected.

I went into the Jewish agency. I went
into the Leo Beck Institute, and I found

the information. I assembled it, and I
produced a book. So you're taking it to

the process of putting it together.

It's important to suffer a little,
because the elaborate way in which the

scheme... was structured and then to try
and uncover it and just what you've

referred to right now at a time pre
-internet access to that kind of

must have been quite extraordinary.

So maybe you could shed for our
listeners a little something about the

that, the research that went into it and
putting together a team to pull all

this information together.

There was no internet.

There were no internet.

There were no computers.

The manuscript was typed.

And every time I changed a footnote,
they had to retype the entire

It was retyped 30 times.

By the way, on an IBM Selectric.

So I was using the best IBM equipment
even back then.

I did this in the late 70s and early
80s.

We had to assemble everything by hand.

We did everything by carbon paper and by
a photocopy. There were very few Xerox

places in Israel. It was hard to make a
copy.

But we assembled a team, and we had all
these meetings, and we found the

information. Most people didn't know
what we were looking for.

And at one point, I ran into an
archivist in Israel who seemed to know

the files were hidden.

And I said to him, how is it that you
know so much about this? He says, I was

the transfer agreement.

And the word transfer in Hebrew is
Havara, which means transfer.

Transfer Limited, Havara Limited, was
the name of the overall company.

And you must remember, this was by the
Nazis.

cooperated with by the Nazis, and the
Nazis and the Zionists actually worked

together because they had an
intersecting interest.

The Nazis wanted the Jews out of
Germany, designed them

into Palestine.

The Nazis wanted to seize German assets,
German Jewish assets.

The Zionists wanted to save.

german jewish assets and the only way
they could do it was by this treatment

the nazis were willing to work with jews
on this is that what you're saying

that's right but their desire was to to
ultimately to exterminate the jewish

people so was this before they had gone
down that path or it just was it was

serving their greater interest in her
interest explain that to us a little bit

understanding the nazi period for real

is understanding a complex set of
situations.

It was actually Byron Sherwin from
Spurters College who schooled on the new

approach to understanding both the
reality and the perception of reality.

And the perception of reality often
dictates the real set of facts that

occur on the ground and tumbling down
the road.

saw working with the Zionists as the
best, most expedient way to stop the

boycott and to get the Jews out of

Germany. Where were they going to go?
They were going to go to Palestine. Now,

there's another train of thought here.

The Nazis believed in something called
Volkisch Thought.

That means ethnic supremacy.

And they believed that the Germans had
the Völkisch primacy in Europe,

and they thought that the Jews needed to
go to Palestine, quote, where they

belonged. And so you had the fantastical
idea of

Goebbels and others publicly endorsing
Jewish emigration to

Palestine. The Nazis actually struck a
coin.

with a Jewish star on one side and a
swastika on the other.

While all the Jewish organizations were
shut down, the Zionists were allowed to

maintain their operation and were
allowed to grow.

But you must understand, when the
Zionists published their newspaper, they

Nazi censors in the office.

Overlooking every line. People don't
understand exactly what the nature of

invasive Nazi regime was.

It is easy to say they could have fought
back, and on many levels people did

fight back.

But what the Zionists did is they were
the realists, the cold -heart realists.

So let's talk about within the context
of the Jewish community then.

And there are some important issues
here.

There's a lot of misunderstanding.

Were Jews passive?

Were they resistant?

You alluded a little while ago to the
nature of an anti -Nazi boycott.

So if you could just share with us a
little bit about the backlash and what

Jewish community was trying to do in
response to Hitler's early rise to

Okay. We need to look at this as two
titanic forces.

The boycott.

to cripple the Reich, to cripple the
Reich, and the transfer effort

to save the Jews.

They seem to be on competing, parallel
competing tracks here, yeah?

No, they are on a collision course.
That's what I meant, collision course,

They're on a collision course. The
boycott movement did what had to be

The Jews condemned the Nazis. They had
million -man marches.

There was a boycott in every city.

It was led by the American Jewish
Congress.

by Stephen Wise, a famous name in Jewish
history.

There were rogue boycotts, organized
boycotts. And these were things to all

Americans as well as Jews. No, it wasn't
just Americans.

It was in Czechoslovakia. It was in
England. It was in France.

Don't buy German goods and services.

Was there opposition to that, by the
way, boycott?

Yes, there was opposition within the
American Jewish community. It's very

for people who look at the American
Jewish community today and believe it.

monolithic. But you and I both know that
the Jewish community back in the 30s

was anything but monolithic. It's a very
complex story.

But the Jewish community was comprised,
the Jewish leadership in the country was

mainly run by what were known as German
Jews.

which is the courtly Jews.

They didn't want to rock the boat so
much. Not only did they not rock the

they had led all the vigorous boycotts
and protests, Czar, against France,

against Damascus.

They were the ones who fought back
whenever Jews were persecuted.

And whether or not the regime in
question, the Tsar, would take

retaliation or revenge upon the
inhabitants was never an

issue. They always had to stand up for
Jewish rights.

And they successfully defended Jewish
rights all over the planet.

In this case, the Jews who would be
retaliated against were not some Russian

called Sasha.

This would now be their uncle Heinrich,
their cousin, their daughter.

It would hit home. So they were afraid
there would be a backlash against Jews

Germany, and some were counseling, wait
a minute, we should back off on this.

Yes, and who am I talking about? Let's
get names.

American Jewish Committee, they were
anti -Zionist.

In those days.

In those days, not now, of course.

And B 'nai B 'rith, anti -Zionist, also
German Jewish in its major composition.

And these guys wanted to work quietly,
behind the scenes, petitioning

officials. They wanted nothing to do
with any vigorous protest, Nazi Germany.

Contrast that with the other Jewish
organization, not the committees and

the elite, but the democratic Jewish
people. And that was...

the Eastern Jews, the so -called
American Congress.

It's really like labor and management.
It was really the population against the

elite. And the population said, we're
going to protest this. And what did they

have to protest?

What was the weapon that the average Jew
had to fight Hitler?

The money in their pocket.

That was it. And not to use it for Nazi
goods in Germany. And not to use it for

Nazi goods. Now, at the same time, what
are we talking about?

The height of the Depression.

So, if you're going to see the articles
in China and film and other

goods and services for Czechoslovakian,
French, American, lots of people are

going to join that.

Labor unions, Czechoslovakians,
Catholics who were

outraged by what was being done in
Germany.

Protestants, this was interracial, this
was non -sectarian. True, it was led by

the Jews, but they were very careful to
be all -inclusive and never call this a

Jewish boy.

Let's also keep in mind, there's also
the nativist movement in America in the

1930s. The Jewish community was nowhere
near as well organized or as willing to.

take positions as they are today,
advocating on behalf of their fellow

part because of everything you've
mentioned here.

In some way, did this boycott feed into
German Nazi notions about Jewish

power?

That was the power of the boycott.

You never measure a boycott in nickels
and dimes or fennigs

and marks.

You measure a boycott in ergs of fear.

Okay. How afraid are you of the boycott?

And were they, were the Germans? The
Nazis believed in Jewish boycotts.

The Nazis were a Jewish conspiracy which
controlled money and markets.

Adolf Hitler personally lionized his
hero.

Who was his hero?

Henry Ford.

And what brought Henry Ford down?

A Jewish boycott.

by the American Jewish Committee and B
'nai B 'rith and the Congress against

Ford Motor Company, and this was vividly
in the minds of the Nazis. So the Nazis

believed in the boycott almost as much
as the boycotters believed in the

boycott.

If anyone comes to you with
statistics...

They don't know what they're talking
about because it's fear. It's economic

that ruled the economy and the
relationship. So how did the transfer

play into the drop of the boycott?
Without the boycott, the Nazis would

seen no necessity to work with the
transfer agreement.

So in that way, the boycott succeeded.

To kind of like succumb and go around
it, so to speak. That's right. By

subverting the boycott, they could do
the transfer agreement.

The transfer agreement succeeded.

because it did bring the Jews out of
Germany into Palestine, created a Jewish

state. And had that not occurred, no one
would have been the fate of those Jews.

Were there other areas of cooperation,
by the way, between the Nazis and

Palestine at that time?

Yes, there were. There were
undercurrents. Economic cooperation.

this is simple.

This was complex, and that's why I had
five years putting it all together.

Jewish Palestine was half agrarian, if
not mostly agrarian, at that time in the

1930s. The Jews did not own much of the
land, which they did buy with transfer

agreement money. They did not have a
transfer agreement money. They did not

a big infrastructure, but they had
farms.

And what was the biggest product?

I'm going to guess oranges, was it?
Oranges was the big product of Jewish

Palestine. It was the economic
wherewithal. Who was the number one for

from Jewish Palestine?

Nazi Germany.

So, now Jewish Palestine, which was, of
course,

abruptly surprised on January 30th by
Adolf Hitler, Jewish Palestine is now

looking at their number one customer.

Which is the Third Reich. And if those
oranges are not purchased,

there can be no economic vitality for
Jewish Palestine. And there was a

threat by the Third Reich. We won't buy
Jewish oranges

from Palestine. We'll buy fascist
oranges from Spain.

Valencia's so this is one of Valencia's
so this is one of the important unknown

undercurrents it's easy to see this in
black and white my challenge of a

challenge of history

is to see the complex grays that
established this very murky picture.

at some of those complex things, because
obviously, just even those words you

touched upon so far, this was not a
simple kind of a thing. It sounds like

there's a lot of moving and shifting and
maneuvering going on in terms of

international merchandise purchases. So
could you share with us then, what were

the dynamics?

of the transfer agreement? What was the,
you know, essence of it? Okay, it

starts out with a Jew in Germany taking
his money and

putting it into a blocked account.

Now, Reichmarks were hard to identify.

They had dozens of different types of
Reichmarks and Reichmark values.

But generally speaking, across all
these...

fictitious and real mark systems.

It was about 5 ,000 Reich marks would
equal the amount due. The Jew would put

his money into a blocked account, a
spare account, and that account would be

fundamentally a trustee account.

And that would be run by this bank in
Germany.

Then they would sell goods.

They would sell pipes.

They would sell taxis. They would sell
it in Palestine.

They would sell it in Lebanon.

They would sell it in Turkey. They had
all different types of commercial

distribution for German goods.

When the money was made available, the
money was deposited in a second bank.

The name of that bank was the Anglo
-Palestine Bank.

The Anglo -Palestine Bank renamed itself
after the State of Israel was

established, and the name is now Bank...

Same bank.

Anglo -Palestine Bank would take that
money, credit through an international

clearinghouse the German trust fund. The
German trust

fund would issue the foreign currency

of 1 ,000 British pounds. A capitalist
certificate would be given to the German

Jew, and that German Jew would then...

come across, and many times came across
with replicas of his own home. He came

across with carpets. He came across with
building materials. He came across with

cars. He came across with musical
instruments.

And suddenly there was a massive Jewish
and infrastructural and economic

infusion into Jewish Palestine.

So let me ask you.

It's complex.

Okay, leaving aside the complexity, let
me just ask a simple question.

Was this then a situation whereby the
Jewish community somehow was

to the Nazi efforts and helping to
finance what it is that they wanted to

able to do?

Yeah.

And that must have been also one of the
causes for such an explosive reaction to

your book, right? Yeah.

It's a deal with the devil, not with the
angels.

It's a deal with the people who want to
kill you. So basically, every time they

rescued a Jew, it paid into the Nazi
economy.

And it's worse than that.

I mean, there were many dynamics that I
never even wrote about, but the Jews

were compelled.

The Jews were compelled to rescue Jews
in this fashion.

It was a terrible choice that was thrust
upon the Zionists,

but you do not blame...

the hostage with the gun at their
forehead.

Did the Zionists consult with anybody on
this, or they just said, do this, and

this is what we need to do? Did they
talk with the American Jewish Committee?

assume I know the answer. They just went
on their own, is that right? They

didn't care about the American Jewish
Committee.

In fact, Zionism was controlled out of
London until this time. London

until this time.

And by the time the transfer agreement
came to the fore, the access point

for Zionist authority had transferred to

Jerusalem. And so the people on the
ground in Jerusalem were making

And they weren't just taking any first
-serve basis.

They were actually concomitantly
building the state of Israel. And so

consequently, they...

They took the people who had a chance of
surviving in Jewish Palestine, not just

anyone. When we've used this term, the
Zionist leaders, the Jewish

any particular leaders that we know of
who were involved in advocating

for this?

Yes, the entire Jewish agency. We're
talking David Ben -Gurion.

We are talking about another.

gray, not black and white fabric.

Just as I said, the American Jewish
community was divided between these two

different blocks.

The Zionist community was also not
monolithic.

There was what was called at that time
the Mabai party.

You're talking about people like Ben
-Gurion. You're talking about a guy by

name of Chaim Arlazarov.

Everybody who's been to Israel has been
down the street called Arlazarov.

And Al -Azharov was the chief engineer
of this agreement,

and he was murdered for it on the beach
in Tel Aviv at the

location where the Hilton now stands in
Tel Aviv. Right there, there was no

Hilton there at that time, and he was
killed presumably.

by the followers of the dissident
Zionist faction, and that dissident

faction was led by a group associated
with Menachem Begin, but really

with Jabotinsky. The revisionists. And
they called themselves revisionists, and

the term revisionists at that time meant
we have a new idea for Zionism, and

these were the fighting...

They were the Zionists who said, we want
to fight Hitler. We don't want to have

a deal with him. And consequently, as
the Jewish community was torn apart on

subsuming and subverting the boycott,
the Zionist community was

fighting. They had riots. They had
contentious votes.

They were tearing their hearts out
saying, how can we cut a deal with these

Nazis?

Common to say, common to say, the Nazis
weren't thinking of

extermination. I've gone into the
record.

My first use of the word, my first
common use of the word extermination in

literature goes back to 1933.

Because that was the word they used in
World War I to exterminate the

was extermination. So consequently, it
was...

a word of parlance of the day. And the
Zionists completely expected everything

because they had a complete grasp on
Jewish history, on the worthlessness of

Jewish life at the hands of murderers.
They had seen many, many Jews die in

Eastern Europe and in other parts of the
world. So I want to fast forward now.

We're talking about the event that
occurred then. We're talking about the

controversy about the book on a personal
level.

Exposing this, dealing with this,
writing about this, obviously must have

lot of, well, I don't know what to say,
whether it was ad hominem's attacks or

whatever.

What was it like when the book first
came out for you in that context?

Well, this was my first book. I was
only, you know, I was in my 20s when I

started it.

It came out in 1984.

I'd been the editor of a city magazine,
but I'd never been exposed on the

international stage.

The book was published worldwide,

and people were surprised, confused.

There was a town hall meeting set up in
Chicago to discuss this.

and it was supposed to be in some little
JCC social room.

And by 1 o 'clock, so many people had
made reservation. They moved it to

a large synagogue, and then they moved
it to a football stadium.

And I had 1 ,100 people waiting to hear
me talk about this, and it was

rough.

They said that Muammar Gaddafi was
financing me.

I had picket lines.

They said my parents were from Kuwait.
Of course, they're Polish survivors.

They hired psychologists to
psychoanalyze me. Why am I doing this

But ultimately, the test of time, the
historical veracity, the truth of the

book. Were you surprised or did you
anticipate that it may have that kind of

reaction, by the way?

I anticipated because that was my
reaction.

Okay.

I hated the project.

But you liked the book.

Well, I wrote the book. Rewrite the
book. The book had to be written, and I

wrote it.

So it was a story you felt had to be
told. Yeah, I was on a... It was trial

fire for my first book. It prepared me
well for IBM and the Holocaust.

So were you surprised as you were doing
your research with...

Were you God, in other words, or when
you started it, did you think it would

reveal what you ultimately learned about
the whole setup?

The entire book covers the minute -by
-minute developments in

three countries accounting for time
zones in Jewish Palestine, Germany.

and the United States. We have
diplomatic messages going back and

only covers the first eight months of
1933.

It's very, very intense.

It accomplished what I wanted to do,
which is to understand what had

and... So you went into it wanting to
understand, but my question is, were you

surprised by the conclusion, or you kind
of, as you started to get into it, I

wanted to find the conclusion that I
had.

Okay. It was pretty wide, and it's kind
of like that with a lot of my books.

I never believe how far it's going to
go, and I take it to the end of the

factual line.

I won't remember you're telling me about
the IBM book and saying you just stood

at the Holocaust Museum staring at the
IBM machine there and wondering, the

computer, why is that there? So I know
that you just process it and think about

it. Tell us about what would be, when it
first would come out, the worst moment,

your most gratifying moment as well.

Well, the worst moment, the worst
moment, what was the worst moment?

The worst moment was probably when I had
a

guy, there were people attending one of
my lectures.

He was an undertaker.

And he said to me, we want to bury your
son's book.

Wow.

And the best moment was when I won the
Carl Sandburg Award from the best book

the year.

And I became a cost celeb in the Jewish
media. There I developed a syndicated

column.

in 50 Jewish newspapers on the strength
of the transcripts. The Jewish media

actually, well, I didn't even know there
was a Jewish media. I didn't know there

were, at that time, Jewish newspapers in
every city, and the Jewish newspapers

plastered this all over and gave it a
great deal of credence, and it gave me

entree to pursue my wider mission.

of exposing ingested Jews, Holocaust
factuality and verity, and to do

the other things that I've done.

So it really launched your career. You
went on, you became a columnist in

newspapers, as well as, I believe, for
the Jerusalem Post and elsewhere.

Yes, I was syndicated throughout the
world. In fact, Louis Farrakhan granted

the first interview.

to the first interview for a Jewish
journalist because he had read the

agreement. And that book, he actually
made a statement, often quoted Jews have

gutter religion.

The Jews made a deal with the Nazis. And
I know what he's referring to. And I

know because the Jewish author wrote it.

And so there are a lot of antagonists
who use this information

to invalidate the Jewish state.

and who used this information falsely to
claim that the Holocaust

did not exist.

But people will use the Bible, the
biography of Golda Meir, the

Ben -Gurion, Moshe Dayan. They will use
anything that they have. And they are

frustrated by the fact that I have
brought out the truth, which is that the

Jews...

that the Zionists rescued Jews.

Now, there were transfer agreements in
other countries.

There was the potentiality of rescuing
millions of Jews.

Millions of Jews could have been
rescued. You have to ask whether or not

Nazis would have been stopped by people
running up and down the street with

placards.

or whether it took something more. The
Zionists were the only realists of the

time. And by the way, there was no
country, there was no major corporation,

there was no major organization that did
not have vibrant relations,

commercial and diplomatic, with the
Nazis at that time. Let me ask you a

question. Your website lists the many
different books you've written on topics

you've talked about, whether it's oil
addiction, whether it's the Holocaust,

other topics.

If I'm not mistaken, this is not one
that you usually talk about.

Right. About 300 events a year. I talk
about IBM and the Holocaust. I talk

oil addiction, Nazi nexus, all of these
books. I don't talk about the transfer

agreement.

It almost seems to me, if I can say
this, I don't want to be psychoanalyzing

this. I don't want to be psychoanalyzing
what you said before. I almost feel

like you have a love -hate relationship
with it. Yeah, I do.

Yeah.

I always tell people, read this book
last.

I've got eight, eight, eight, eight,
nine books.

In fact, I told her from the Miami
Herald, if you review this book, you're

to hate it.

It's not a comfortable book to read.

Well. It was a less comfortable book to
write.

But. The Holocaust is not comfortable.

And the truth is never comfortable.

Now, in the back of the book, as well as
when you signed it, and you did this

for me as well, you asked the question,
was it madness or was it genius?

Yeah.

Do you want to shed any light on that?

Well, all genius is based on madness.

So it was both.

Well, it's a brilliant work and an
important one. What I want to do now is

want to turn things over to Mitchell
Bard, who is going to share with us some

questions scholars have submitted.

And we'll take it from there.

Well, it's hard to know where to start
with this subject. But Martin Gilbert,

who, as you know, is Winston Churchill's
biographer.

and he's the author of a number of books
on the Holocaust and author of a

forthcoming book on Muslim rules of 1
,400 -year history. He wrote, what do

think would have been the impact on the
Israeli ability to absorb Holocaust

survivors in the 1940s had the transfer
agreement not occurred in the 1930s? The

main value of the...

Transfer agreements is 1 .9, 1 .4 to 1
.7 to 1 .9 billion dollars, equivalent

dollars in today's money that was
transferred over, was not trinkets.

It was fundamentally infrastructure.

When Jews came over during the Hitler
period and en

masse and after the fall of the Third
Reich, they came over in huge waves.

Where were they going to live?

What water were they going to use?

Where were the roads going to be?

Where were the lands?

Had the transfer agreement never
occurred in the 1930s, there would not

been the infrastructure to rapidly
absorb all these Jews. Let's remember

this. The Nazi program was continued, as
you well know, after

World War II by the Arabs.

They expelled approximately a million
Jews from Arab lands.

in the years after the fall of the Third
Reich. These people were not put into

refuge. They were quickly absorbed.

The name of the immigration ministry in
Israel is called the Ministry of

Absorption. And they absorbed these
people.

And so the answer to Martin Gilbert is
that...

Had the state of Israel not been aided
with this important impetus

during the Depression years, it would
have been, I think, difficult to

absorb hundreds of Jews who came en
masse during the years to follow. And

was, in fact, anticipated.

I have another question from Professor
Samuel Edelman in Chico, California,

who's the executive director of Scholars
for Peace in the Middle East. He asks,

for other transfer agreements across
Europe, such as one in Czechoslovakia,

Romania, Hungary, why didn't those
succeed in transferring more Jews to

Palestine?

This is true. There was a transfer
agreement in Italy. There was a transfer

agreement in Czechoslovakia, in Romania.
They each had their own financing

schemes. And as the situation became
more dire for the Jews in Europe,

remember Hitler went into Czechoslovakia
and he went into Austria and he began

to take over Europe, the Zionists rushed
frantically to set up more transfer

agreements to save the Jews.

You must remember this very important
statement, and I will quote you a phrase

you know well, that Chaim Weitz divided
into two places.

Those places where Jews cannot live, and
those places where Jews cannot go.

There were...

Most people think that Evian is just
water you buy at the store. The Evian

conference lived with us in 1938 and
what to do with

hundreds of thousands of refugees where
the doors were shut.

So Palestine was the only door open to
the Jews.

They weren't allowed into nations of the
world.

So these transfer agreements had the
possibility.

to transfer hundreds of thousands of
more Jews. Romania, Hungary, most of the

Hungarian Jews were wiped out in ports.

They were organized in Hungary by one of
the members of the board of directors

of IBM, Edmund Wiesenmayer. And imagine
if these Jews had come

by the boatload, literally, into Jews.
What happened?

The war happened.

Economics stopped.

International trade became illegal, and
the Zionists were not able

to continue transferring these monies
out in

an effective and meaningful fashion. And
so the war caught up with the transfer

agreement before the transfer agreement
could catch up with the genocide.

Professor Byron Sherwin of this college,
the author of many books on ethics and

most recently, The Life Worth Living,
who was also, you mentioned the scholar

who first told you about the transfer
agreement, asked, you first heard about

the agreement in an interview you did
with me in the 1970s. I recall that

it in very general terms, you found it
hard to believe that it actually

happened. Now, after all your research,
writing and thinking about it, do you

still find it hard to believe that it
happened?

I didn't believe it happened in those
days because I wasn't smart enough to

that it happened. I wasn't wise enough
to know.

I'd barely been out of Chicago.

The march in question was one in Skokie
where my parents lived. It was just

outside.

If I was presented with this information
now, I would have never believed

that IBM would have had a 12 -year pact.

a widespread commercial coalition with
the Third Reich to identify the Jews and

even to create the basis of the
Auschwitz tattoo.

I would have believed that the
Rockefeller Foundation would have

program that sent Mengele into
Auschwitz. I believe all of these things

I believe them because of the trial by
fire that I had when I did the transfer

agreement.

Professor Sherwin, a very penetrating
question.

If the revision of Zion is led by
Vladimir Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin

been controlling the Jewish agency
instead of Chaim Hora, would there have

a transfer agreement?

Would there have been German reparations
to the State of Israel in the 90s? And

what might have been the economic and
political outcomes for the State of

in its very early history?

Well, I'm often asked, I'm constantly
asked what -if questions on the transfer

agreement. What if the boycott had
succeeded?

What if the transfer agreement had never
been there? What if the transfer

agreement had never been there? But
here's one I think I can answer. And

very dangerous. If is the sketchiest
word in history.

What if?

I believe if the revisionists had
controlled the transfer agreement, the

agents at the time, I doubt very
strongly that there would have been a

agreement with the Nazis.

Now, it's important for me to explain
here the delicate fabrics of the

revisionist movement.

They had actually good relations with
the fascist Italian regime because they

believed in a very strict organization.

They believed in that. But I do not
believe, based upon the immense...

a vituperative reaction vision is that
they would have ever allowed a Zionist

organization and movement to cut a deal
with the Nazis. They would have rather

fought them, and they did fight them.

And by the way, from that you can
extrapolate on your own

what the economic consequences would be.
Now, would there have been reparations

to Israel?

Those reparations were actually
calculated.

In 1938, by Nachum Goldman, I

had access to his unprocessed papers at
the American Jewish Archives in 1938.

In 1938,

before the war broke out, years before
it was established,

the Zionists were already anticipating
the worst. Why?

Because they were realists. Because when
Hitler said we're going to destroy the

Jews, they actually paid attention.

And they actually went out and did
mathematical calculations on Nachum

I have the report.

I've never mentioned him until this
moment.

On what the anticipated destruction,
economic and human, would be if Hitler

succeeded. And Hitler almost succeeded.
He succeeded 99%.

in many countries, and he was stopped,
but just barely.

You mentioned 1938.

That was also the year of Kristallnacht.
We're coming up on the 71st anniversary

in another week or so. And you wrote a
distinguished book on Kristallnacht.

Right. And one of the things I found in
my book, 48 Hours on Kristallnacht, was

that even after seeing what went on, the
government wasn't willing.

to actively rescue Jews.

What did you find in your book and your
research about the U .S. government's

position back in 1933 in the time of
this agreement?

Well, I think that the doors began
closing for Jews very quickly after

the first months of 1933.

There were refugees everywhere.

We're talking about South Africa.

We're talking about Australia.

It was very common for Jews in Germany
to escape

to Austria.

And in 1938, they went from Austria to
Czechoslovakia, and then the Germans

followed them there. And from
Czechoslovakia, they went to France in a

bifurcated fashion.

And so the Jews, when Chaivitzman said
the

world is divided into places where Jews
are not allowed to be and not allowed to

go, it was the reality.

And this was the dire

challenge of the Zionists.

There's an important dichotomy here.

Are we going to make an effort?

to restore Jewish civil rights or to
rescue Jews for national rights.

He's going to take a dollar to keep a
Jew where he is and help him get through

the starvation imposed upon him with a
dollar and transfer him. This is real

politic. Remember, even the relief
packages.

that were given to German Jews to get
through starvation, those also went into

the German economy.

This is too complex to be black and
white and too complex for, it was almost

too complex for me. That's why it took
about five years to figure out.

Wally Ferris in Washington, D .C., who
is an expert on Middle East affairs and

the author of The Confrontation, Winning
the War Against Future Jihad.

asks, what do you think would have been
the impact or lack of it on the Israeli

economy in modern Israel if there had
never been a transfer agreement?

There are many institutions today...

such as Mekarot, the water company,
which are taken for granted. These are

infrastructural companies.

And these companies occurred due to the
investment that came over the

transfer of assets.

Now, it's common for some people to say,
the transfer agreement did not rescue

people, it rescued money.

That's not true.

It rescued people.

It's true that the rescue of the
individuals went out in cadence with the

purchase and distribution of Nazi goods.

But the fact of the matter is they had
to buy these goods in order to rescue

people.

Now, what's interesting is when the Jews
were in concentration camps, they

didn't say, I'm German.

They didn't say, I'm Polish. They said,
I'm a Zionist. I wish to live.

And the Zionists endorsed that. Jews
have a right to live, and they saved the

remnant, and they saved it with the gun
to the head. And that gun has never been

removed from the temple, even though
it's gone an inch or two away. The gun

still always cocked, and if I could just
put an asterisk in for modern times, we

still have today.

The Iranians trying to do in 12 minutes
what Hitler could not do in 12 years,

which is wipe out the Jews. And so the
Zionists understood that there needs to

be a strong Jewish state whose have the
same national aspirations other groups

do.

Martin Cohen, a student in Jerusalem,
asks, why did so many other historians

fail to write about the transfer
agreement and the anti -Nazi boycott?

They didn't want...

The transfer agreement was understood.

There were several treatises in German
and in Hebrew academic circles.

It's not like today, where somebody does
a master's thesis, it's up on the

Internet, and suddenly a million people
have access to it. When I went to the

Leo Beck Institute in New York,

And I looked at the user guide, the
finder's aid, and I said, where are the,

said, the files are supposed to be, I
said, the files are supposed to be in

folder. Where are they?

They're not in this file. They're not in
this cabinet. Where are they? He said,

they're underneath my desk.

And he gave them to me.

The book tried to do what historians do,
does not seek to do.

which is to be all -encompassing on a
narrow topic instead of doing

a very slender matter. And so I had to
work not in one or two archives, but

in...

20 or 30, and I had to put all this
together.

And this was how I'd be, this was the
invention of the Edwin Black approach to

Holocaust documentation.

Never to look at one place, but 20
places, and to put it all together in a

puzzle. But the short answer is, why
they didn't want to, why they didn't do

they didn't want to.

And by the way, I didn't want to.

I could see why, given...

and comfort of the whole subject.

James Matthews in Sydney is a reader who
wrote, could the worldwide anti -Nazi

boycott have toppled the Hitler regime,
not undermined by the Zionists, or if it

was endorsed by the Zionists?

It's another one of these questions that
is impossible to answer and

inappropriate to answer, but I'll try.

The boycott...

would not have been, was not capable of
ruling the German regime.

Because remember, we're talking about a
regime, people who quote statistics on

the German economy don't know what
they're talking about.

This was an illegal, corrupt economy
that stole other people's money as their

own economic wherewithal. When they
stopped stealing it from their citizens,

they stole it from neighboring
countries. It was a fascist economy.

So it would only make the Hitler regime
more desperate. But what the boycott

could have done, possibly,

in its early stage had an impact on some
of the policies. And we see it did have

an impact, because without the boycott,
there would be no transfer agreement.

The only reason the Nazis felt compelled
to negotiate with their enemies,

nationalists, was because this boycott
was a weapon that the Nazis, in their

mythical confusion, actually feared.

On the subject of the boycott, Joyce
Nelson in New York, another reader

was the anti -Nazi boycott just a
boycott of Jews, or was it bigger than

Bigger than that.

It was never called a Jewish boycott.

There were Catholics involved, some of
the greatest figures in the...

New York Archdiocese and Boston
Archdiocese were involved.

The Polish were involved.

Labor unions were involved.

The Protestant community was involved.

The organizers of the boycott against
the Nazis were very careful to sculpt

as not a Jewish tragedy, but one which
was threatening the world. You know what

they say, the Jews first and everybody
else second.

And that's why they did it the way they
did. It was extremely credible.

But then when the Jewish organizations
backed off the boycott

because of the transfer agreement, it
was left to a bunch of unsupported,

people who for years...

walked up and down the streets with
protest signs and still carry a torch,

I'm glad that they did.

Both were necessary.

We needed to protest the Hitler regime,
and we needed to save the Jews.

I am not unhappy that both occurred.

Kenneth Babu in Fresno, California, a
computer programmer, asked a related

question. Granted, what you're saying
about the importance of the boycott, he

wonders, did the Zionists cooperate too
soon?

For too little.

People need to understand the minute -to
-minute life in

Nazi -occupied, in Nazi -dominated.

He could be killed.

He could be sent to a concentration
camp.

There was a limit for the Zionists could
play their own cards. And the best card

that they had.

The best card was that people over there
who we can't control, these American

Jewish organizations, are protesting by
the hundreds of thousands, protesting by

the hundreds of thousands, and
bankrupting your companies, which were

the wayside.

And we have the ability to circumvent
that.

So from the Nazis' point of view, they
were dividing the Jewish community.

with the trance agreement as well as
serving all these other interests that

discovered. No, they didn't do too
little too soon. They did

as much as they could as soon as they,
but they did it in a different set of

modalities.

I think it was always understood by many
that

Hitler thought of Palestine as a great
big prison camp for the

Jews. They'd be put there in Palestine,
and then they could take over

the Middle East.

But I think design is thought.

Let's save the Jews on Monday, and we'll
figure out what happens on Friday.

You know, it's always been a Jewish
aspiration.

We don't want to be killed before
Shabbos.

Let's finish with a last question from
Joseph Myers, a retired teacher here in

Montreal. How did your work on the
transfer agreement affect you

and why is this one event in Washington
your only event on this book so often on

your other books?

Well, it's an appropriate final
question.

It affected me personally in that it set
me off on a

circumnavigation of the world of evil.

And as circumnavigating the world of
evil and injustice against

the Jews and other groups,

The further I go, the more at the same
point.

And I always end up where I started.

So it's done that to me.

As to why this is my only event, because

I choose to.

I want to thank Rabbi Weinblatt for a
stimulating discussion and Edwin for

A very important book, which even 25
years later, as you say, still covers

offers a very powerful message for us.
Thank you. And thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mitch.

Edwin Black is the author of many books,
including IBM and the Holocaust, War

Against the Weak, and Internal
Combustion.

He's the editor of The Cutting Edge
News.

For more information, visit
TransferAgreement .com.