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The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine Paperback – January 25, 2001

4.6 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

First published to international acclaim in 1984, The Transfer Agreement stunned readers worldwide with its revelations of a pact between Zionist leaders and Hitler's Third Reich. Concluded in 1933, this controversial pact transferred 55,000 Jews and $100 million to Palestine on the condition that Zionist organizations call a halt to their economic boycott of Nazi Germany -- a potent tactic that was threatening to topple Hitler's government, then only in its first year in power. The debate over this controversial deal virtually tore apart the Jewish world in the pre-World War II era, and it remains unresolved today. Whereas the transfer agreement indeed ultimately saved lives, rescued assets, and helped lay the foundation for what would become the Jewish state in 1948, it also -- arguably -- allowed the Nazi regime to survive its first year and, over the next twelve, to plumb the depths of ethnic intolerance and implement massive genocide. With the world today confronting such morally complex issues as the compensation for slave labor during the Holocaust and the refusal of Swiss banks to return Jewish assets to their rightful heirs, the transfer agreement and the boycott that preceded it stand out even more startlingly as early examples of Jewish initiatives against Nazi terror. However ambiguous the choices made by the Jewish leaders in the turbulent prewar 1930s, they stand in a new and different light today. The Transfer Agreement is a remarkable and revelatory book that has now found its time.
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Carroll & Graf
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 25, 2001
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Updated
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 484 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0786708417
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0786708413
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.39 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.25 x 9 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #1,287,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

About the author

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Edwin Black
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Edwin Black is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling international investigative author of 300 award-winning editions in 20 languages in 190 countries, as well as scores of newspaper and magazine articles in the leading publications of the United States, Europe, and Israel. Since 2020, he has hosted the weekly issues-oriented and history-based podcast, The Edwin Black Show, along with its companion YouTube channel, which broadcasts the edited and visually documented episodes plus trailers, bonus features, and topic-based playlists. In 2024, he was appointed the first-ever scholar-in-residence to the International March of the Living, which gathers in thousands worldwide each year at Auschwitz.

With more than 2.5 million books in print, for more than a half century, his work has focused on human rights, genocide, organized hate, corporate criminality and corruption, governmental misconduct, academic fraud, philanthropic abuse, oil addiction, alternative energy, the Middle East, and historical investigation. Editors have submitted Black’s work fifteen times for Pulitzer Prize nominations, and, in recent years, he has been the recipient of a series of top editorial awards and nominations. He has also contributed to a number of noted anthologies worldwide. For his human rights investigations, Black has been interviewed on hundreds of network broadcasts from Oprah, the Today Show, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports, and NBC’s Dateline in the US, to the leading networks of Europe, Latin America, and Israel.

His human rights works have been the subject of numerous documentaries, here and abroad. Several of his books have been optioned by Hollywood for film, with two in active pre-production. Black’s speaking tours include hundreds of events each year at prestigious venues. In the US, he has lectured broadly, from the Library of Congress to Harvard University, and from the United Nations to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. In Europe, he has lectured at top venues, from London’s British War Museum and Amsterdam’s Institute for War Documentation to Munich’s Carl Orff Hall. He has appeared to speak, lecture, or testify on a variety of social justice and historical issues numerous times in numerous legislatures, including the US House of Representatives, North Carolina’s General Assembly, the European Parliament, the Australian Parliament, the Canadian House of Commons, and Israel's Knesset.

Black’s twelve award-winning and bestselling books are IBM and the Holocaust, War Against the Weak, The Farhud, Nazi Nexus, Israel Strikes Iran, The Plan, Internal Combustion, Banking on Baghdad, Financing the Flames, British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement, The Transfer Agreement, and a novel, Format C:. His enterprise and investigative writings have appeared in scores of newspapers from the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times to the Chicago Tribune and the Sunday Times of London, Frankfurter Zeitung, and the Jerusalem Post, as well as scores of magazines as diverse as Der Spiegel, L’ Express, Business Week, and the American Bar Association Journal. Black’s articles are syndicated worldwide by Feature Group News Service, JNS, and other sub-syndicates.

In 2025, Black became the first in the world to publish a book on the Twelve-Day War, Israel Strikes Iran: Operation Rising Lion, which released in 12 print, electronic and audio editions, in the leading book channels of 190 countries. In major back-to-back events in April 2025, Black functioned as event historian for the Eisenhower Legacy delegation at the International March of the Living at Auschwitz. Then he flew to Jerusalem where he chaired several key forums at the JNS International Jewish Leadership Policy Summit. Black received a medal for his leadership from the International March of the Living.

In 2024, Black became the first appointed scholar-in-residence and historian for the International March of the Living at Auschwitz, officiating for all delegations and ceremonies. Earlier that year, Yad Vashem in Mexico and the Museum of Tolerance sponsored a momentous four-event series in Mexico City. Yad Vashem bestowed upon Black a special service award for lifetime achievement. In addition, Black delivered the inaugural lecture at Towson University’s Berman Center for Humanity, Tolerance & Holocaust Education.

In 2023, Black’s lecture on IBM and the Holocaust opened the Furman University exhibit Americans and the Holocaust, sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association.

In 2020, during the COVID crisis, Black launched his highly-lauded weekly podcast The Edwin Black Show and its companion YouTube Channel, delving deeply into such as topics as genocide, historical inequities, Israel, antisemitism, and other human rights issues. During its several seasons, many prominent guests have regularly appeared on Black’s show, which enjoys scores of thousands of views.

During 2018 and 2019, Black appeared at scores of prestigious universities, museums, and synagogues in America and abroad. This included organizing and leading the main Kristallnacht 80th Anniversary ceremonies in New York City, which was attended by leading Jewish leaders and academicians.

In 2017, Black undertook a 14-event global series across the United States and Australia, ignited an international campaign to replace the United Nations with his idea for a replacement organization he called “the Covenant of Democratic Nations.” That same year, 2017, he led a 13-city series across America on the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.

In 2016, Black organized a whirlwind 70th Anniversary Farhud commemoration starting in the House of Representatives in Washington DC, moving to New York, then London and then Jerusalem’s Knesset—all within 5 days. International Farhud Day was conceived by Black to commemorate the Arab-Nazi riot of June 1 1941 in Baghdad, this based on his book The Farhud. The series of public events followed his June 1, 2015 proclamation, of International Farhud Day at UN Headquarters in a live global UN event, also driven by revelations in The Farhud. International Farhud Day is now observed worldwide.

In 2014, in his bestseller Financing the Flames, Black exposed massive irregularities in taxpayer-enabled NGOs in Israel, including the New Israel Fund. In that book Black journalistically revealed for the first time the existence of Palestinian Authority reward salaries for convicted terrorists , with the level of compensation increasing upward based on the severity and number of victims resulting from their crime. This revelation became known as “Pay to Slay.” He appeared before several national legislatures to detail his findings. In February and early March 2014, Black appeared before four parliaments in four weeks: The British House of Commons in London, the European Parliament in Brussels, the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, and finally before the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, DC.

Also, in November and December 2014, Black embarked upon on a 45-event Human Rights Tour. In North Carolina, Black appeared nine times in three days, speaking out against the persecution of Yazidis, Shi’a Muslims, and Christians in Iraq; racial injustice in America and its impact on elections; environmental injustice arising out of oil addiction; journalistic ethics in covering human rights; bias against Jews in Israel; and a health care crisis in the Middle East.

From 2013 and 2011, Black was featured at hundreds of scholar-in-residence programs in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Israel. Black was featured at scores of speaking events in the United States and overseas, highlighting all his published works. His tour appearances included one before the European Parliament in Brussels about IBM and the Holocaust and modern-day privacy concerns—an issue that continues to raise alarms. That year, special expanded editions of both IBM and the Holocaust and War Against the Weak were published. During that period, Black continued to be featured at hundreds of scholar-in-residence programs in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Israel.

In 2011, Black was featured at a four-week scholar-in-residence in Australia sponsored by the Shalom Institute, which focused on his work in petropolitics (a term that Black coined) and Holocaust history. He was also asked to deliver a week-long 5-campus scholar-in-residence in North Carolina sponsored by an official coalition of that state’s universities, legislators, civic institutions, and other leadership groups, exploring the dark side of eugenics, this arising from his bestseller War Against the Weak. The North Carolina tour was marked by numerous standing-room only appearances. Black's work helped spearhead the successful crusade for eugenic reparations paid by the state of North Carolina. That year, 2011 Black received four service awards: from Moriah College in Sydney for his work in Nazi Nexus, from the Jewish War Veterans for his work in the book The Transfer Agreement, from Hadassah Ahavat Yisrael for his work in the book The Farhud, and the HBCU institution, North Carolina Central University, issued him its “Drum Major for Justice” for lifetime achievement.

For further information, go to EdwinBlack Dot Com.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
12 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2017
    Format: Paperback
    This is not taught in school... ANYWHERE. Fascinating insight into a different time and place, addressing an age-old issue.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2001
    Format: Paperback
    This is a typical Edwin Black book. As in his other important Holocaust related work, IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST, he goes into great detail on events, speeches, and other occurrences that took place mainly in 1933 with the rise of Hitler to power. The Nazis did not waste any time and immediately started with the persecution of the approximately half a million German Jews. There was an immediate world wide boycott against German commerse. The labor Zionists in Palestine and elsewhere, being opportunistic in nature, used this calamity that preceded the Holocaust and negotiated a secret deal with the Nazis. The Nazis allowed some Jews to leave Germany for Palestine with money, and in return the Zionists did not participate in the boycott against German goods. Information about this shameful affair was suppressed by all Israeli goverments headed by labor in the last 50 years. Black's description of this affair is very detailed but overly repetitious. A major problem is the lack of sufficient summaries. Black describes the events and more or less leaves it to the reader to arrive to conclusions. Examples: he mentions the complete silence of FDR on the persecution of the German Jews (which lasted later throughout the war) but there is no comment on it. There is a good description of the paranoid hatered of Jabotinsky and his followers by the labor Zionists but no comment on it. In several comments, however, Black expresses the opinion that the transfer agreement was beneficial to the future establishment of Israel because of the German goods and some German Jews that went to Palestine. The price was dealing with the devil. History showed otherwise. The transfer agreement constituted a minor factor in the establishment of Israel, and that is why Ben Gurion and his cronies tried to hide it. The irony is that during the Holocaust the labor Zionists again made deals with the Nazis to save their own people at the expense of others (see PERFIDY by Ben Hecht). This book is a very important historical document. I hope that somebody will use Black's hard work in digging up all the details of this forgotten dark period, to throw more light on the actions (or inactions) of the labor Zionists during the Holocaust (Ben-Gurion, Stephen Wise, Nachum Goldman, etc), because of their sick devotion to socialism and their love affair with FDR.
    100 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2002
    Format: Paperback
    I originally read this book when it came out as a Macmillan hardback some years ago. The new Carrol Graf edition has some fascinating new insights by the author as of 2001. Undoubtedly this re-issue was timed to coincide with Edwin Black's other major book, IBM and the Holocaust. Although I have read both books, I am still gripped by the power and drama of Transfer Agreement--must reading for those who to understand the State of Israel, Zionism and its intersection with the Nazis. Powerful reading, this is history written as no one else can.
    25 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2002
    Format: Paperback
    This book is an amazing insight into Israel's tremendous historic drama--one obviously overlooked by others. Anyone who reads this book should be prepared for a whodunit style history, with gripping and tragic moments that stay with you long after the book is put down. No wonder The Transfer Agreement continues to thrill and inform people.
    18 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2008
    Glen Yeadon, author of Nazi Hydra in America, had this to say about The Transfer Agreement:

    I found it very boring--it was steeped with internal Jewish politics and very little about the actual negotiations with the Nazis or the actual deal and its results. It is geared to Jewish historians and only vaguely to the war and the Nazis... I liked IBM and the War against the Weak - both were good and I bought this one on the strength of the other two. It tried to remain neutral rather than to place the blame on the Zionists. For example, there was no mention of the Zionist who helped load the trains in Hungary to Auschwitz, who was hanged in Israel in the 50s. That type of material was neatly sanitized by omission.
    15 people found this helpful
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