This book and its documentation posit one question: when will the Jewish people not be compelled to make such choices? Indeed, when will all people similarly confronted be freed from the desperation of such choices? The message of The Transfer Agreement was in fact the chronicle of the anguish of choice-itself the quintessential notion of Zionism’s historical imperative. Yet he persevered to tell this painful yet utterly crucial story of Jewish redemption:
The cognitive dissonance of such a relationship apparently caused Black much anguish and confusion.
Black asserts in his Introduction to his 2009 edition that just because Nazis worked with Zionists in the 1930s to establish the commercial, financial, and industrial infrastructure which would become the backbone of Israel does not mean that the Nazis deserve praise or are no longer the despised enemies of humankind. Indeed, if anything, The Transfer Agreement casts a sympathetic light on the Nazis and reveals how unnecessary, preventable, and essentially Jewish the Second World War really was.Īll of this, of course, is unintentional. Ultimately, however, it delivers everything but checkmate. As far as histories go, it’s well-paced, extensively researched, and thought-provoking. It’s filled with nail-biting drama and larger-than-life characters it gives us suspense and intrigue, and embodies the agony and ecstasy of Jewish triumphalism on almost every page. Edwin Black’s 1984 volume The Transfer Agreement, which chronicles the secret pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine, is one such polemic. When you write a polemic, one meant to justify victory in a war, it would be best to deliver checkmate-that is, irrefutable proof that the correct side had won and that lives had not been sacrificed in vain.
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