On the Internet you can find many publications that states that representatives of the Zionist movement actively collaborated with the Nazi regime. We checked how justified such statements are.

Such allegations are not only at resources Obviously anti -Israeli orientation, but also in publications that apply for a balanced approach. In particular, in the video of the Arab-Israeli conflict, released on March 28, 2023 on the Bulletin of the Bury YouTube channel and collected 486,000 views at the time of writing this analysis, was included chapter "How Hitler helped the Zionists."

In itself, such accusations can hardly be called something new-since the 1970s they have been widely used in the Soviet propaganda directed against Israel. In particular, they were nominated in numerous books and articles by publicist Lev Korneev - for example, in the article "On the cooperation of Zionists with the secret services of Hitler Germany" (1977) and in the book "The class essence of Zionism"(1982).

In the West, this topic was widely known thanks to the book of the American writer and supporter of Trotskyism Lenny Brenner "Zionism in the age of dictators". It was published in 1983, already in 1984 it was promptly transferred and from a distance in the USSR.

Despite the fact that anti-Semitism was the central element of the racial theory of the Nazis, starting from the very emergence of this movement in the 1920s, they did not really immediately advocate the physical destruction of the Jews (at least publicly). The discriminatory laws adopted after Hitler came to power were aimed at depriving German Jews of property, public influence, as well as contribute to their emigration. Objectively, this coincided with the goals of the Zionist movement, which aimed at moving the Jews to Palestine, who was under the control of the British administration, and the creation of the national Jewish state there.

This contributed to the conclusion on August 25, 1933 of the so-called Haavar agreement (resettlement agreements) between the German Ministry of Economy, the Zionist Federation of Germany and the Anglo-Palestinian bank, closely associated with one of the main Zionist bodies-the Jewish agency (dry). Under the terms of the agreement, by 1939, 50,000 - 60,000 Jews left Germany to Palestine (about 10% of the total Jewish population of the country as of 1933). At the same time, they took a significant amount of German industrial goods there, which partly helped the Nazi regime overcome the trade boycott, which a number of countries of Europe and the USA tried to organize against him (including on the initiative of the local Jewish population). The conclusion of the Haavar agreement and relations with the Third Reich were warmly discussed at the Zionist Congresses of 1933 and 1935, where many delegates criticized this decision as immoral. The contract stopped in 1939, when at first the British authorities sharply limited and complicated Jewish immigration to Palestine, and then the Second World War began.

As for the cooperation of Zionist organizations with the Third Reich in the military-political sphere, evidence is much less obvious and unambiguous.

One of the most frequent arguments in favor of such cooperation is called meetings in 1937 between Fevel Polkes, a member of the underground Jewish militarized organization Hagan, and Nazi functionaries, including one of the main future future organizers of the Holocaust Aichmann. In February 1937, Polkes secretly met with Eichmann in Berlin, where he offered his services as an informant and invited a German official to visit Palestine. On October 3, Eichmann and his head of the Nazi secret service of the SD Herbert Hagen under the guise of journalists Arrived in HaifaBut because of the opposition of the British authorities, they were forced to postpone the meeting in Egypt. The negotiations held on October 10-11 in Cairo did not bring the result, since Hagen did not agree with the demands of Polkes to facilitate the conditions of the emigration of Jews from Germany. Moreover, in all likelihood, these negotiations were the personal initiative of Polkes, and not the agreed decision of the Hagan, because when it became known about them, it Seveled From all the posts that he occupied in the group.

The second frequently mentioned example of the alleged cooperation of the Zionists with the Nazis is negotiations that were in Beirut at the end of 1940 between Naftali Lyubinchik, a member of another underground Jewish Militzed organization Lechi, and a representative of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the meeting, Lubinchik handed over the Lehi leader compiled by Abraham Stern,, offers On the military union, provided that the Third Reich will help to create a national Jewish state in Palestine. The very fact of this meeting is indisputable thanks to the preserved German translation of the proposals of Stern, as well as recently released The protocol of the interrogation of another member of the organization, Efraim Cetler (he was detained in 1942).

However, firstly, it must be borne in mind that the “Lech” was a few (no more than 200 people) and the most radical group in the Zionist movement. She adhered to the tactics of individual terror against British officials. She was sharply condemned by other Zionist organizations, including the universally recognized leaders of the Jewish community of Palestine, which Publicly expressed support Great Britain in World War II. It is significant that the already mentioned organization of Hagan, in the late 1930s, which actually became a military unit of the World Zionist organization, with the outbreak of war ceased to fight against the British authorities. Many of her members joined Jewish brigade, who fought in 1944-1945 in Europe against the Nazis as part of the Allied forces. Secondly, there is not a single evidence that Stern’s proposal was seriously perceived in the Third Reich. As an instrument against British influence in Palestine, the Nazis decided to use Arab nationalists, a symbol of which became meeting Hitler with the mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Huseyni in Berlin in November 1941. Thirdly, it should be noted that Stern’s proposal was made before the Nazis moved to the full-scale genocide of the Jewish people after an attack on the USSR in June 1941, which is now and now counts The direct beginning of the Holocaust.

Thus, there are no facts of real cooperation in the military-political sphere between the Zionist organizations and the Nazis both before the Second World War and during it. At the same time, some marginal figures of the Zionist movement really tried to use Hitler’s policy to accelerate Jewish immigration in Palestine and the struggle against the UK, which then controlled this region. Those individual Zionists who in occupied Europe during the Holocaust tried to cooperate with the Nazi regime (such as, for example, Rudolf Kartner In Hungary), after the war, they were unconditionally condemned in Israel and were seen as traitors.

At the same time, in the first years of the state of the state of Israel, European Jews who went there experienced an unfriendly attitude from earlier immigrants and indigenous Israelis. One of the offensive nicknames addressed to them "sabonym"(" Pieces of soap "). It probably hinted at the common Although incorrect, the opinion that in concentration camps from prisoners they made soap, and should make fun of their alleged weakness and inability to fight the enemy during the Holocaust.

Photo on the cover: Ori Lubin Via Wikimedia Commons