Transfer and Boycott in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume XXVI

The Transfer Agreement and The Boycott Movement: A Jewish Dilemma on the Eve of the Holocaust

The article discusses the conflict between the Transfer Agreement and the anti-Nazi boycott movement in the 1930s, in the context of the differing viewpoints and needs of German and Polish Jews, and of the Diaspora and the Yishuv. The Labor-Revisionist Zionist conflict was also expressed in differences over these policies. The two policies were the products of different perspectives on Nazism, antisemitism, and Jewish life in the Diaspora. Each policy seemed to have potentially far-reaching implications for every group. Advocates of the Transfer Agreement saw this policy as a way to keep a channel of communication with German Jewry open and to deliver German Jews to safety, whereas boycott advocates were at once self-sacrificing and heroic yet naive regarding their potential impact on Nazi Germany.