Haavara (Transfer) Ltd.

The Haavara Agreement (“Transfer Agreement”) was concluded on 25 August 1933 between Nazi Germany and Zionist organizations, following negotiations involving the Zionist Federation of Germany and the Anglo-Palestine Bank with Nazi economic authorities. The agreement enabled the migration of approximately 60,000 German Jews to British Mandatory Palestine between 1933 and 1939.

Under the agreement, Jewish emigrants transferred part of their assets by purchasing German-manufactured goods, which were exported to Palestine and sold there. While the arrangement facilitated escape from Nazi persecution for many German Jews and provided labor and capital to the Zionist settlement project in Palestine, it was deeply controversial. It was condemned by figures such as Ze’ev Jabotinsky, opposed by non-Zionist Jewish groups, and criticized within both German society and the Nazi Party. Crucially, the agreement also undermined the international anti-Nazi boycott of 1933, which had significant support among European and American Jews and was viewed by the German state as a serious economic threat.

In Mandatory Palestine, a growing Jewish population (174,610 in 1931, rising to 384,078 in 1936 and 600,000 in 1948) was acquiring land and developing the structures of a future Jewish state despite conflicting sentiments within the Palestinian population of Mandatory Palestine.