Love of the Land: The Sukka and the Swastika

The Sukka and the Swastika

Yehuda Avner
JPost
07 October 09

Succot, 1936. The newly appointed German consul-general to Jerusalem, Herr Walter Doehl, stood at his office window hung with an extravagantly tasseled swastika banner, and gazed with curiosity at the sight of clusters of bearded Jews, all draped in prayer shawls and resplendent in the styles and furs of late-medieval Poland, entering and exiting a ramshackle foliage-thatched booth on the other side of the Street of the Prophets where his legation was situated, each clutching what seemed to him to be a lemon and a palm frond.

"It's one of their festivals - Tabernacles," explained the man by his side, in an almost unintelligible guttural German. "They're coming from their synagogues for schnapps. And they wave those things around when they pray for rain."

The man was Ludwig Buchalter, chief of the Nazi Party in the German Colony - a pastoral, red-tiled roofed Jerusalem neighborhood, built by the messianic Templers and studded with monumental stone buildings, statuesque pine trees and picturesque alleyways. Though he had never set foot in Germany in his life, Buchalter looked every bit a Bavarian burgher. The skull of his moon-shaped face was shaved, and beneath his bulbous nose drooped a Hindenburg mustache. He was wearing a short, leather-buttoned, olive-green jacket with rounded lapels, to which a swastika badge was pinned.

That day, he was also sporting a Nazi armband. In making this first call on the new German consul-general he wanted to show off his impeccable National Socialist credentials with their subliminal message that he, Herr Buchalter, was largely responsible for Herr Doehl's appointment to Jerusalem. For months he had been exhorting the Foreign Ministry in Berlin to get rid of the incumbent, a Dr. Heinrich Wolff, because "he is married to a woman of Semitic origin."

No wonder he was so thrilled at finally being able converse with a fellow Nazi in authority concerning the party's goings-on in the German Colony. And how proud he was to be standing there in that opulent room, with its brass chandelier that hung low from the domed, lofty ceiling, bringing out the shine in the waxed black-and-white tiled floor, and the brilliant hues of the ceremonial Nazi flag draped on the desk next to the silver-framed portrait of a smiling Adolf Hitler shaking hands with an adoring Walter Doehl.

In fact, Buchalter was so elated that when he took his leave he executed a cracking click of the heels, a perfectly rigid straight-armed salute and a fervently loud "Heil Hitler," almost colliding as he swung about with the next caller - a Dr. Werner Senator.

Senator was a bespectacled intellectual in his early 40s, with the benevolent look of one whose life's work was social welfare. Himself of German origin, he fittingly headed the Jewish Agency's Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews, a task that required many dealings with the Nazis. This he found understandably unpalatable, but he rationalized that Moses had had no scruples in dealing with Pharaoh when negotiating the Exodus, so why should he not negotiate with the Nazis to get his people out of Germany?

Doehl, tall and groomed, looked extraordinarily spruce in contrast to his pudgy, rumpled visitor, who, on taking a seat, found himself frowning at a wall brandishing a row of close-ups of the Third Reich's leaders in triumphant poses, headed by Hitler.

"You like my picture gallery, I see," said Doehl, his face melting into a buttery smile. But this unexpectedly morphed into an angry scowl, and he growled, "What on earth is that din outside?"

Both men sprang up to look down through the open window upon a clutch of yelling demonstrators, penned in by two British policemen by the succa booth, and carrying crude placards that read, "Down with Jews who trade with the Nazis," and "The Jewish Agency Transfer Agreement is treason."

The consul-general snapped the window shut and, settling into his high-backed leather chair, said sardonically, "I understand the Transfer Agreement is one of your portfolios."

"Indeed it is," sighed the Jewish Agency man, taking a seat. "And as you see, it is a source of heated controversy." Indeed, it was.

The Transfer Agreement had been negotiated by the Jewish Agency with the Nazis in 1933. Under it, German Jewish émigrés to Palestine were permitted to transfer a proportion of their assets (the bulk had to stay behind) in the form of German-manufactured goods, particularly agricultural and construction machinery, which the Zionist movement needed to build the Jewish national home. Upon arrival in the country the Jewish Agency paid the newcomers for the value of the equipment, minus a percentage dedicated to national enterprises.

It was a mutually beneficial trade-off: The refugees were provided with the basic wherewithal to begin life afresh; the Zionist Organization received invaluable equipment for its nation-building program; the Nazi economy, desperately starved of foreign currency, was given a serious boost; and the worldwide boycott of German goods, spearheaded by the American Jewish community, was severely breached.

Doehl made a tent of his manicured fingers and said silkily, "I have to tell you, Dr. Senator, that Berlin is in the process of reassessing the whole Transfer Agreement."

Senator's heart missed a beat. He sat there observing the Nazi, navigating with his instincts, intuition whispering to him to say nothing until he heard more.

"The point is," continued the German, "since we signed that agreement in 1933, time has moved on. When the Fuehrer came to power, our coffers were almost empty, and your American Jews were launching a worldwide boycott of German goods. One of the reasons we made the agreement was to smash that boycott."

Senator punched back hard: "Perhaps so, Herr Consul-General, but nobody has lost out on the Transfer Agreement. It has helped you implement your diabolic policy of ridding Germany of Jews. It has helped us absorb them. It has created jobs for your unemployed. It has earned you foreign currency. And, yes, it has undermined the boycott. So why tamper with it?"
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Love of the Land: The Sukka and the Swastika