Victims as perpetrators: German Zionism and collaboration in recent historical controversy

The German Zionist movement changed radically following the Nazis' assumption of power in January 1933. Throughout the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), the movement exploited German anti-Semitism as a means for persuading German Jews to emigrate to Palestine. At this time Jews could be simultaneously Jews, Zionists and loyal Germans, a condition no longer possible under the Nazis. Initially, German Zionists sought to achieve a rapprochement with the Nazis based on their common desire to have Jews emigrate. And in fact 50,000 German Jews did emigrate to Palestine during the 1930s.