German Zionists in Palestine before 1933

It is a well-known fact that thousands of German Jews emigrated to Palestine after Hitler's rise to power in 1933, since it was one of the few countries which accepted Jewish refugees. What is not so well known, however, is that German Jews emigrated to Palestine before 1933, mainly during the years 1920-33. Although few in number, these early emigrants were by no means unimportant. It was the first time in the history of Zionist settlement that western Jews emigrated to Palestine, where the overwhelming majority in the Yishuv1 were Jews from Eastern Europe. These early emigrants moved to Palestine not for economic or political reasons, but out of idealism. German Zionists comprised a small minority among the approximately 600,000 Jews who lived in Germany, and before 1933 membership in the Zionistische Vereinigung fur Deutschland (ZVfD) never exceeded 20,000. The ZVfD was also a small movement within the World Zionist Organization (WZO), of which its members only ever formed a small percentage. Since Zionist historiography has traditionally not dealt with minority groups and their special problems, until recently German Zionists and particularly German Zionists in Palestine were a neglected subject among historians. It is only in the last few years that several studies have been published, and these do not include the small Zionist emigration from Germany before 1933.2 The majority of German Zionists who moved to Palestine arrived after the first world war, when, after the British Mandate had been established, Zionist settlement at last seemed feasible. The approximately 2,000 immigrants who arrived from Germany before 1933 came from all shades of the political and

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