[A] central [point] for Zionist film activity was Berlin. Even while German Jews were forcibly removed from the nazified film industry, the German Propaganda Ministry allowed the Zionist Union of Germany to organise segregated production and distribution outlets in the Reich: Zionist film propaganda in Germany was to encourage the Jewish community to emigrate to Palestine. Meanwhile, German‐speaking immigrants in Palestine were often responsible for Zionist film production.
[…]
After 1933 the Zionist Union of Germany played a central rôle in the life of the isolated German Jewish community. Prior to [1933], the Union had represented only a small portion of German Jewry at least in contrast to the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith (Central Verein deutscher Staatsbürger juedischen Glaubens), which represented the overwhelming majority of assimilated, liberal German Jewry [25]. The preference of the Nazis was clearly formulated:
The Government frankly supports the Zionist movement and gives it all possible privileges, because the Zionist policy of a planned Jewish emigration from Germany into Palestine coincides with the policy of the [Fascist] government … in the liquidation of the Jewish problem … [26].
The Zionists for their part, interpreted Hitler’s [antisemitism] as a blow against assimilation:
Hence, the Zionists could, for a time, at least, engage in a certain amount of non‐criminal cooperation with the [Fascist] authorities; the Zionists too believed that “dissimilation,” combined with the emigration to Palestine of Jewish youngsters and, they hoped, Jewish capitalists, could be “a mutually fair solution” [27].
The changed political constellations consequently effected attitudes in the Jewish community: In 1935–36 Zionist organisations collected three times as many contributions as in 1931–32. Gone were the times when a Jewish lawyer could uncritically remark that he would rather be hanged by Herr Hitler, than give one penny for Palestine [28].
Yet even after the Nurnberg [sic] laws made emigration the only feasible alternative, Zionist organisations still needed to convince a large portion of the Jewish community. Newcomers to Palestine were usually asked: “Have you come out of conviction or are you German?”
In this context it is not surprising that Zionists expanded their film propaganda activities in the Third Reich through the Palestine Film Office of the Zionist Union (Palestina Filmstelle der Zionistischen Vereinigung für Deutschland). The Film Office’s chief, Manfred Epstein, was apparently involved in Palestine Foundation Fund policy under Leo Herrmann as early as 1934.
After organising the world premiere of Land of Promise, and distributing a number of short films, Epstein began negotiating for setting up film production facilities in Berlin. Working together with the former Ufa newsreel chief, George Engel, Epstein argued that German technical capabilities were superior to those available in Palestine. Between 1936–38 the Palestine Film Office in Berlin produced two feature films and five shorts [29].
All Zionist film productions were of course censored by the [Fascist] Propaganda Ministry, which permitted their screening “for members of the Jewish race only” [30]. The first films distributed by Palestine Film Office were 16ram silent documentaries, often produced by German–Jewish émigrés for Zionist contractors.
The Tekufa Film Co. produced From Vadi Charith to Emek Hefer (1936, dir. Erich Brock, Walter Kristeller) for the Jewish National Fund; Timm Gidal shot Erez Israel in Construction (1936), and Ernst Meyer filmed The Way to Reality (1937) and Brit Hanoar (1937) for the Keren Tora vaʻAvodah [31].
These films dealt with Zionist colonisation and agriculture in the Kibbutzim, especially those settlements, which had been set up for German middle‐class Jews. Furthermore, they were meant to counteract waning Zionist enthusiasm in the diaspora following the Arab revolts of 1936 [32]. The films were usually shown with live musical accompaniment, and preceded by a lecture. […] The […] image of Palestine as a desert waiting to be colonised was reinforced.
(Emphasis added.)
Events that happened today (October 30):
1882: Günther Adolf Ferdinand von Kluge, Axis field marshal, existed.
1893: Roland Freisler, State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice, was unfortunately born.
1906: Hans Otto Georg Hermann Fegelein, Waffen‐SS commander, made life less tolerable with his presence.
1933: Dozens of SA men marched to the Turkish embassy to hold a guard of honor for the Turkish Republic and stood there the whole day. Later that day, Ernst Röhm, head of the SA, and the rest of the core SA leadership came to congratulate the ambassador and to walk past the honor guard with him—many of this honor guard had served in the Ottoman Empire.
1941: The Axis sent fifteen hundred Jews from Pidhaytsi to Bełżec extermination camp.
1942: Lt. Tony Fasson and Able Seaman Colin Grazier drowned while taking code books from the sinking Axis submarine U‐559.
1944: Axis personnel deported Anne and Margot Frank from Auschwitz to the Bergen‐Belsen concentration camp, where they died from disease the following year, shortly before WWII’s end.