Ben Gurion again called upon the Yishuv to show the same wisdom and restraint they had shown in the past. He publicly denounced the terror tactics. But even as he spoke there were elements within Haganah who wanted to come into the open and fight. Fearing a showdown would lead to its destruction, Avidan was again forced to hold his army in check.
Barak Ben Canaan was sent to London to join Dr. Chaim Weizmann and the other Zionist negotiators in trying to force a reversal of the White Paper. But the men in Whitehall were determined not to revoke it and thereby incite the Arabs.
In Palestine the Husseini mob was busy again. Despite the
fact that Haj Amin was still in exile the rest of the clan
was still handling opposition through assassination. The Higher Arab Committee was grabbed by the Mufti’s nephew, Jemal Husseini.
Within Germany the Jewish situation was beyond despair. The Zionists’ organizations were on the verge of collapse as even the most complacent German Jews panicked to get out of the country.
The British were making it as difficult for certain Jews to leave Palestine as for Jews to get in from Germany. They realized that anyone with a Haganah and Aliyah Bet background was a potential agent. When Ari left Palestine on orders from Avidan he had to slip over the Lebanese border at Ha Mishmar and hike to Beirut on foot. He carried the passport and visa of a Jew who had recently arrived in Palestine as a “tourist.” In Beirut, Ari caught a boat for Marseilles. In another week he showed up in Berlin at Zionist headquarters at Number 10 Meinekestrasse.
His orders were: “Get as many Jews out as possible.”
When he arrived in Berlin, Zionist headquarters was a scene of panic and chaos.
The Germans were playing the visa market for all it was worth. The more desperate the Jews became, the higher the price for their freedom. Many families turned over entire fortunes for the privilege of being able to escape from Germany. Visas were forged and stolen-visas were life. The first cruel fact of life was that few countries of the world wanted the German Jews. They simply closed their doors. If they did give visas it was with the understanding that the Jews would not come to their countries.
Ari was faced with the decision of deciding who got the visas and who didn’t. Each day he was the victim of threats or the object of bribes and desperate pleas. The Zionist rule of thumb was to get the children out. For five years the Jews had appealed to their German numbers to leave Germany.
Along with the children there were essential scientists, doctors, professionals, and artisans, the very cream of the society.
Ari and the Aliyah Bet were moving them in mere hundreds, while thousands were being trapped.
He decided on a desperate gamble in an attempt to get several thousand visas at one time. That way, Ari reckoned, he could at least move the “essentials” and many children out. He alerted Aliyah Bet in France to be prepared either to receive these thousands-or to expect his own disappearance to a concentration camp.
Ari then went into negotiations with high Nazis to sell them the idea of issuing exit permits in larger numbers. He
argued with a strange but fascinating logic. Britain and Germany were both trying to win Arab favor; Ari pointed out that the more Jews who got to Palestine, the more embarrassed the British would be.
How paradoxical that the Aliyah Bet was teaming up with the Nazis in an effort against the British. Arii quickly had training farms set up in the Berlin area under Gestapo protection.
In addition to all the visas he could buy, steal, bribe, and otherwise wangle, Ari built an underground railroad right under the Germans’ noses for getting out the top-priority Jews; but these people, mostly scientists, escaped only in twos and threes. During the fear-filled summer of 1939 he worked around the clock as the time ran out.
Meanwhile in London, Barak Ben Canaan and the other negotiators worked the clock around too. They spoke to members of Parliament, Ministers, or anyone who would listen to them. But do what they might, the British would not budge from their immigration policy.
In mid-August, Ari received an urgent message from Aliyah Bet in France: leave Germany at once.
Ari ignored the cable and continued his work, for each day now seemed a race against death.
Another cable came. This time it was a Haganah order for him to leave.
Ari gambled on just seventy-two hours more, for he was working on a stack of visas to get a trainload of children into Denmark.
A third cable came-and a fourth.
As the trainload of children crossed the Danish frontier, Ari Ben Canaan made his own escape. He left Germany forty-eight hours before Hitler’s Wehrmacht rolled into Poland and ushered in World War II.
Ari and Barak Ben Canaan returned to Palestine from their separate missions. Both men were exhausted and both of them were crushed by despair.
At the outbreak of war it took only ten minutes for the Jewish leaders to announce their course of action. Ben Gurion urged the Yishuv to come forth for duty in the British Army to fight the common enemy.
There was additional encouragement from the Haganah which saw this as an opportunity to train its men legally.
General Haven-Hurst, the Palestine military commander, raised strong objections with the War Office about letting Palestinian Jews into the British Army. “If we train Jews now and give them combat experience we will only be spiting ourselves, for surely we will have to fight the very same Jews later on.”
Within a week after the war began one hundred and thirty thousand men and women-one out of four in the entire Yishuv-had signed up at Yishuv Central to volunteer for the British Army.
As for the Arabs, most of the Arab world looked upon the Germans as their “liberators” and waited for them.
It was impossible for the British to ignore the Yishuv’s offer. It was also impossible not to heed General Haven-Hurst’s warning. The War Office decided upon the middle road of accepting Palestinian Jews but keeping them out of front-line assignments so that they could not get actual weapons training and combat experience. The Palestinians were turned into service units, transportation and engineering battalions. Yishuv Central protested angrily against the discrimination and demanded equal opportunities fighting the Germans.
The Yishuv had presented a solid front, except for the dissenting Maccabees. Avidan decided to swallow his pride and through a chain of underground contacts asked for a meeting with Akiva.
The two men met in a cellar beneath Frankel’s Restaurant on King George Road in Jerusalem. It was filled with cases of canned food and bottled goods stacked halfway to the ceiling, and it was dark except for the light from a single light bulb.
Avidan offered no handshake as Akiva entered, flanked by two Maccabees. It had been five long years since the two men had seen each other.
Akiva looked in his sixties and more. The long hard years of building two kibbutzim and the more recent years of underground living had turned him into an old man.
The room was cleared of Maccabee and Haganah guards. The two men faced each other.
At last Avidan spoke. “I have come, quite simply, to ask you to call a truce with the British until the war is over.”
Akiva grunted. He spat out his contempt for the British and their White Paper and his anger at the Yishuv Central and Haganah for their failure to fight.
“Please, Akiva,” Avidan said, holding his temper. “I am aware of all your feelings. I know exactly what differences there are between us. Despite them, Germany is a far greater enemy and threat to our existence than the British.”
Akiva turned his back on Avidan. He stood in the shadows thinking. Suddenly he spun around and his eyes blazed as of old. “Now is the time to get the British to revoke the White Paperl Now-right now-declare our statehood on both sides of the Jordan! Nowl Hit the damned British when they’re down!”
“Is statehood so important to us that we must gain it by contributing to a German victory?”