Controversial Book on Nazi-Zionist Agreement

Live

on Channel 5, this is the 10 o'clock news with Deborah

Norville.

Coming out revealing secret negotiation between the Nazis and the

Zionists in 1933, which allowed German Jews and their

assets to go to Palestine. Rich Samuels joins us tonight with the

story of the

controversy behind the book and the author's struggle to write it.

Rich?

Deborah, with the rise of Adolf Hitler to power in

the spring of 1933, the Jews

of the world were faced with a dilemma.

They could raise a cry of protest, a cry few would heed, or they

could make a deal with Hitler, a deal that would bring a step closer to their

dream

of an independent Jewish state. The choice they made was difficult and

agonizing. This new book describes that choice.

The book is called The Transfer Agreement.

This is Israel a few days ago, the season of Passover.

And this is Germany 51 years ago. The blossoming of Adolf Hitler's

springtime. A key factor in the vitality of today's

Israel, the

book's author argues, was an agreement reached in 1933 between a

group of

Zionists and the man who would later try to kill every

living Jew.

The great irony

is that Adolf Hitler became the chief economic sponsor of the state of Israel.

It will be an argument against, and the wrong

argument, against Zionists.

Some who lived through those times fear the response to this book.

I lived on-

The parents of the author feared its very writing

... Park Road, um.

Uh, when your son came to you

and said he was gonna write this book, what was your, what

were your feelings about

his undertaking?

I told him he's not my son anymore.

Why did you say that?

I told him I'm gonna sit shiva.

As though he were dead?

That's right.

I tell him I don't like it.

Because as being a Jew,

I didn't want something to uncover my own people.

I was buried in a grave between seven people.

I was seven time captured.

Edwin Black's parents are Holocaust survivors.

So what?

My parents never talked much

about the Holocaust.

Edwin Black, who filled the void left by the silence of

his parents, has

written this book, a dense, detailed chronicle of the early months of

1933.

Heil Hitler.

Heil

January 30th, 1933, Hitler becomes Germany's interim

chancellor. The Third Reich has begun.

But in this country on March 4th, attention is diverted by the

inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

More power to you, President Roosevelt.

The entire country's behind you, thrilled with hope and

patriotism.

But ominous headlines tell what's already happening to the Jews of Germany.

The protest of American Jews was heard almost immediately.

It was based on only the sparsest of press reports, and nowhere was that

protest more vocal than here in New York City.

All creeds, local and national organizations,

and labor parties are joined in this

gigantic demonstration passing through famous Washington Arch.

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, honorary president of the American Jewish

Congress, leads the procession down Fifth Avenue on

foot.

Father arranged for the first great mass meeting at Madison Square Garden to

protest Hitlerism. He felt that when

freedom was threatened,

silence condoned oppression always.

Thousands who waited hours behind police lines rushed forward as the doors

of Madison Square Garden are opened.

Jews and Gentiles join in the race for seats, and 22,000 of them

get in.

I was a young kid then, you see. I was a teenager.

And I belonged to a Zionist youth group.

And, uh, we were all summoned to go to that rally.

Well, it was a very agitated crowd.

Uh, many Yiddish speaking,

a few English speaking.

Uh, and, um,

Rabbi Wise mounted a, uh, an appeal to the Jewish

people to do something to, um, to

save Jewish honor.

Most of the important,

well-established Jews were very angry at him, said this was

sensationalism,

and that if anything happened to the Jews in Ger-