In 1933, the Jewish Agency and the Nazis negotiated the
Ha'avara Agreement(transfer agreement), under which 50,000 Jews would be transferred to Palestine. The Jews possessions were confiscated and in return the Nazis allowed the Ha'avara organization to purchase 14 million pounds worth of German goods for export to Palestine (which was used to compensate the immigrants). The Nazis did not normally allow Jews to leave with any money or to take more than two suitcases. The agreement was controversial and the Labour Zionist leader who negotiated the agreement,
Haim Arlosoroff, was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1933. The assassination was a long source of anger between the Zionist left and Zionist right. Arlosoroff once dated
Magda Goebbels and may have been assassinated by the Nazis to hide the connection, which only emerged recently. In Palestine, Jewish immigration (and the Ha'avara goods) helped the economy to flourish. A port and oil refineries were built at Haifa and there was a growth of industrialization in the predominantly agricultural Palestinian economy.
Between 1929 and 1938, 250,000 Jews arrived in Palestine (
Fifth Aliyah). 174,000 arrived between 1933 and 1936, after which the British increasingly restricted immigration. The influx contributed to the
1933 Palestine riots. Migration was mostly from Europe and included professionals, doctors, lawyers and professors from Germany. As a consequence German architects of the
Bauhaus school made Tel-Aviv the world's only city with purely
Bauhaus neighborhoods and Palestine had the highest per-capita percentage of doctors in the world.
As Fascist regimes emerged across Europe, persecution of Jews massively increased, and Jews reverted to being non-citizens deprived of civil and economic rights, subject to arbitrary persecution. Significantly antisemitic governments came to power in
Poland (from 1935 the government boycotted Jews),
Hungary,
Romania and the Nazi created states of
Croatiaand
Slovakia, while
Germany annexed
Austria and the
Czech territories.
