ABSTRACT
Beginning in 1933 the Yishuv embarked upon a program of rescue aliya as the primary Zionist response to the Nazi persecution of German Jewry. Such importance was attributed to the program that the editors of the Jewish Agency Report for 1933 listed the German aliya as one of four crucial events that had transpired since the previous report. In 1933 the Yishuv began its campaign of rescue aliya. Despite its success at bringing in 174,803 olim between 1933 and 1937, of whom 39,324 were from Germany, disputes arose over virtually every aspect of the aliya campaign. The anonymous author also anticipated an aliya of at least 6,000 German Jewish capitalists. In this way, over the course of nine years a total of 90,000 immigrants could be accommodated. At the Nineteenth Zionist Congress, in 1935, David Ben-Gurion spoke about mass aliya in similar terms: a million Jews to be resettled in Eretz Israel as quickly as possible.
