When he set off for Poland, the forty-six-year-old Döblin looked the part of a bookish writer. He favored tweedy suits, wore eyeglasses that gave him a fishbowl stare, and had a pronounced crease in his brow that deepened with age. His two month tour, chronicled in Journey to Poland (1925), brought him into contact with religious Jews, wonder-working rabbis, Zionists and Yiddishists. And though Döblin traveled by train through modern Europe, his journey led him straight into the depths of “ancient national feeling.” His revelation that the Jewish “nation remained whole” despite having been “thrown out of Palestine […] two thousand years ago” roused Döblin to action. He contemplated Jewish rebirth through Zionism, wondering: “What if history were turned backward and the Jews were really given Zion?” But his flirtation with the Zionist movement was short-lived. Döblin ultimately sided with an anonymous Yiddish writer he met in Lodz who concluded that Zionism is “not where the future of the world lies”; first “the world has to be humanized.”[4]

By the mid-1930s, as Germany descended into barbarism, Döblin dedicated himself to a humanist vision of Jewish redemption. He was influenced in large part by his Polish travels and his subsequent encounters with émigré Jewish intellectuals he met in Berlin. Formerly an alienated and indifferent Jew, the nearsighted Döblin emerged as a visionary ideologue for a group of Yiddishist social revolutionaries: the Freeland League for Territorial Colonisation (Frayland-lige far Teritoryalistisher Kolonizatsye). The Freeland League took its name and inspiration from Jewish economist Theodor Hertzka’s utopian novel of East African colonization, Freeland: A Social Anticipation (1890). The similarly named Hertzka had been Theodor Herzl’s journalist colleague for the Neue Freie Presse, and his programmatic novel had influenced the Zionist leader’s own technocratic fantasies of the Jewish future both in his founding manifesto, The Jewish State (1896), and his 1902 novel, Old-New Land (Altneuland). Hertzka’s vision of cooperative land ownership in East Africa had also impressed Herzl’s hand-picked advisor on settlement issues, Franz Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer had even published a critical revision of Herzka’s novel, Freiland in Deutschland (1895), which promoted a system of economically rational, planned settlements in Germany. In 1903, Herzl invited Oppenheimer to address the Sixth Zionist Congress as an expert on settlement issues. Herzl hoped Oppenheimer’s speech would reinforce for delegates the practical nature of the so-called Uganda Plan. Later, Oppenheimer’s settlement system formed the blueprint for the structure of moshav Merchavia. In their choice of name, Freeland League leaders thus borrowed equity both from Jewish intellectual history and from successful Zionist settlement schemes in Palestine in order to legitimize their own ill-starred colonization efforts.

The Freeland League emerged in Poland as a response to rising anti-Semitism in that country and the growing belligerence of Nazism on its borders. A heterogeneous group of  intellectuals, scholars, belletrists and political activists formed the core of the nascent Freeland League in Warsaw in the early 1930s. They sought to provide Jews with an alternative to Zionism, non-territorial Bundism, and assimiliationist trends. This disunited cadre conceived of the Freeland League as a reincarnation of celebrated Anglo-Jewish author Israel Zangwill’s defunct Jewish Territorial Organization (ITO), combined with the agrarian commitments of left-labor socialist revolutionaries. At one point, the British branch of the Freeland League even entertained the possibility of adopting the ITO name and platform.[5] But even before officially chartering their organization at a London conference in 1935, Freeland supporters had published two issues of a short-lived periodical in Warsaw. Contributors to the journal, Frayland, included the influential radical Haim Zhitlowski, socialist leader Ben-Adir (Avrom Rozin), demographer Jacob (Yankev) Lestschinsky, poet Melech Ravtich (Zekharye-Khone Bergner), and—in both issues—Alfred Döblin.

Döblin fled Nazi Germany in February 1933 ahead of the Gestapo and arrived in Zurich. There he was said by a colleague to have discovered Herzl’s legacy and taken a particular interest in the failed Uganda Plan.[6] From Switzerland he made his way to France, where he settled. While his books were being burned in Berlin, in Paris he wrote two volumes of meditations on the question of Jewish collective renewal. In these works he presented Jewish Emancipation as a total failure. Instead, he advocated a revival of Zangwill’s ITO plans for mass Jewish settlement in Angola,[7] a plan he also revealed to confidantes in a letter from this period.[8] Döblin envisioned a new territorialist organization that would be even “farther-reaching than Zionism.” Indeed, he believed that his proposed movement would supersede Zionism as a means to rescue the millions of Jews “who live as a slave-people, near, on, or over the verge of destruction.”[9] His rejection of assimilation, his enthusiasm for Zangwill’s ITO, and his socialist agenda caught the attention of the Freelanders. By November 1933 he had become a founder of the Ligue Juive pour Colonisation, later to become the Paris branch of the Freeland League. The frustrations and fantasies of a small but influential circle of Warsaw-based Yiddishists had now found powerful expression in the writings of an internationally acclaimed author, a Jewish atheist who had first reconnected to his religious heritage in Poland. The Freelanders quickly translated some of Döblin’s work to bring his Jeremiads to the Yiddish-reading public. And Döblin reported to Thomas Mann that he had begun learning Yiddish himself.[10]

The first of Döblin’s essays to appear in Frayland in 1934, “The Tragic Fate of West European Jewry,” presented a grim assessment of Jewish homelessness: “Since Jews lost their land and state, they sit […] locked up in a cage like a pack of trapped animals […] because there is no security or law for Jews in the world, because behind the law there must be the sword, and the sword, as we know, is in the hands of others.” He believed that assimilated Jewry stood at a crossroads, one marked by the bent-armed shadow of the swastika. Jewish “lovers of Goethe and Schiller are on trial,” he wrote, tested by anti-Semitism. Döblin felt certain that without knowledge of “their own history” and without “one shred of Jewish content,” his Westernized coreligionists would fail to save themselves. He scorned these “ruins of the Jewish people, these end results of Western Emancipation,” who persist in a “one-sided love” of European culture.[11] Döblin, despite being every bit as assimilated as Herzl and Zangwill, here sounds more like a messianic prophet than a secular political activist.

His second article for Frayland, “Territorialism and New Judea,” appeared at the end of 1934 and expanded Döblin’s earlier vision. In this apocalyptic essay, he focused not on the original Zionist and territorialist question—“How can we get a land for the Jews?”—but on the more fundamental question—“How can we get Jews for a land?” Döblin believed that Herzl’s “wavering between Palestine and Argentina” in The Jewish State, and his later readiness “to come out in favor of Uganda” at the Sixth Zionist Congress, were symptomatic of a weakness inherent both in Herzl’s Zionism and “the old territorialism” of Zangwill. In their narrow pursuit of land, both leaders had failed to consider the spiritual dimensions of the Jewish condition. While Herzl and Zangwill hoped to create a Europeanized sanctuary for Jews on foreign soil, Döblin believed that the struggle to ape Western civilization had already “spiritually killed off half the Jewish community.” He demanded that Jews “stop…turning towards the ‘West,’” which for him was already synonymous with “cold imperialism” and “war-mongering.” Instead, Jews must “gather themselves together, define their own identity, restore themselves once again, and only then, acquire a land.” How they were to do this in practice remained undefined, but Döblin drew on his study of Jewish history to suggest a path forward.

He compared contemporary Judaism’s “battle with assimilation” to the Jewish “situation after the destruction of the Temple.” As the people of the Land of Israel, Jews once had an “organic national structure,” and to endure as the Diaspora People, their identity had to change. “Now,” he declared, “a new form is needed” to “ensure the survival of Judaism, which is being threatened with catastrophe.” Territory was not enough; Döblin sought nothing less than a complete revivification of Judaism. Döblin’s rhetoric turned metaphysical in his depiction of a New Judea. Jewish life would be new to the extent it would “turn away…from Western civilization” and “safeguard its own spiritual base.” And Jewish life would be Judea-ized when it acknowledged its relationship “to an ancient people formed not through a belligerent or political act, but through a lofty spiritual one.” He explained further that New Judea “will be Jewish precisely in that it will carry out a task for humankind. […] For that reason—and not so as to be an ordinary people living within its own borders—was the Jewish people formed thousands of years ago.”[12] Here the jab at Zionism’s normalizing mission is unmistakable.

Remarkably, excerpts of his writing on the Jewish condition appeared in Hebrew translation in a nine part essay, “Jewish Revival,” published in the yishuv’s most influential cultural journal, Turim, a weekly edited by the most important poet of the day, Avraham Shlonsky. Döblin’s reflections on the failure of the Emancipation appeared from November 1933 through February 1934 in Turim’s pages alongside poetry by now canonical Hebrew authors. Döblin even penned a special introduction to his work for Hebrew readers in which he charged that little had changed for Westernized Jews since Herzl, a claim which must have puzzled many in the yishuv.[13] In the penultimate installment of “Jewish Revival,” Döblin lectured his Hebrew readership that Jews “must aspire to mass settlement” in “under-populated lands,” maintaining that Zangwill’s abandoned designs on Angola should be “considered first of all.”[14] Surely such a suggestion would have stunned and outraged those reading his words in Tel Aviv and elsewhere throughout the British Mandate.

The following summer, Döblin traveled from Paris to attend the London conference which formalized the Freeland League. There he presented the opening lecture on the “aims and character of the Freeland movement”[15] to delegates assembled at the Russell Hotel. Notables who lent their name to the cause included philosopher Bertrand Russell, author J.B. Priestley, Jewish communal leader and scholar Dr. Moses Gaster, politician and labor activist Arthur Creech Jones, and Israel Zangwill’s widow, Edith.[16] Though the meetings of the Preparatory International Conference of the League for Jewish Colonisation were ignored by the mainstream British press, coverage in London’s Jewish Chronicle focused on the gathering’s “realist attitude” and noted in particular Döblin’s speech.[17] The yishuv newspaper Davar even devoted a long article to the “new territorialists” and highlighted Döblin’s role as the “movement’s spiritual leader.”[18]

At the conference, Döblin stated his fervent belief that Jews “stand at the end, at the catastrophic aftermath of the lost battle for emancipation.” The “central and essential task” of the League, he wrote, “is to enlighten and awaken the Jewish masses, for this is indeed a matter of establishing their own ‘Freeland.’” But Döblin believed that prior to any territorial settlement, the Freelanders must “build-up the people,” a labor both spiritual and “political-diplomatic in character.” His speech recognized Zionism’s contribution to Jewish life and the eternal holiness of the land of Israel, while insisting that “the Jewish people are greater than the land.” Thus Döblin declared that “the definitive impulse of the [Freeland] movement” should be the “formation of a new Jewish people.”[19] Before the close of the conference, many of the delegates paid their respects to Israel Zangwill by laying a wreath on his tombstone.[20] Following the ceremony, attendees assembled for a closing session where Döblin reiterated that Hitler’s rise demonstrated that Jews “could only live in peace in their own land.”[21]

The author served on the board of the Paris branch of the Freeland League until 1936,[22] the year in which he became a French citizen and Léon Blum became France’s first Jewish prime minister. But he continued to take an active role in the organization through 1937, and was considered to be something of a diplomat in the early months of that year, able to “bridge the gulf” between the Freeland League’s various factions.[23] In mid-November 1937, Döblin attended the Second General Freeland Conference in Paris, where fundamental questions of the movement’s platform were debated.[24] Wearied by the infighting, Döblin abandoned the League a few months later.[25] By that time, his stirring meditations on the Jewish question, coupled with his vocal support for a spiritually inflected territorialism had made him the most well-known Freeland advocate. The Freeland League, never a popular movement, owed much of its ideology and early legitimacy to Döblin. The author’s vigorous response, both in word and deed, to the growing persecution of European Jewry has been overshadowed by his eventual conversion to Catholicism as a result of a personal spiritual crisis.[26] And though he died a Christian, Döblin lived his life during the perilous years of Nazism as a very public Jew.

In late 1936, when the author was still active in the organization, the Paris Freelanders and the Société d’émigration et de Colonisation Juive (EMCOL) joined forces to create a Political-Geographic Committee in order to explore the possibilities of Jewish settlement in French territories.[27] The Committee met on November 20^th and 21^st, 1936 in Paris to discuss whether French overseas colonies could be considered as possible sites for mass emigration.[28] And though the Committee did not count Döblin among its members, he must have been aware of its progress, later informing his son that a Freeland expedition would be sent to New Caledonia and French Guiana.[29]

The Freeland League and EMCOL directly approached the Minister of Overseas France, Marius Moutet, on December 16, 1936 to seek his support for Jewish colonization. Their aim, they explained to Moutet, was “the establishment of a new Jewish Center” for those “Jews from Central and Eastern Europe who are compelled to leave the countries of their birth to settle in some corner of the immense [French] colonies which are so greatly underpopulated. Our preliminary investigations have drawn our attention more particularly to New Caledonia, Madagascar and French Guiana.”[30] Moutet not only had the proper administrative authority to enter into such negotiations, but he was seen as sympathetic to the Jewish plight, in part perhaps because his late wife had been a Russian Jewish immigrant to France.[31] Those involved in drafting the letter included Léonard Rosenthal, the millionaire “Pearl King,” and Julius Brutzkus, a physician, scholar, activist, and sometime ally of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. They met with Moutet a few weeks later, on January 14, 1937, to follow up.[32] The powerful Rosenthal provided the Freeland-EMCOL delegation with direct access to Moutet, whom he considered a “friend and advisor.”[33]

Two days after their meeting, and exactly one month after receiving the Freeland-EMCOL letter, Moutet publicly announced that he was “very sympathetic to the idea of the eventual establishment of Jews in our colonies…Madagascar, for example, presents a favorable opportunity if there is appropriate organization and financial backing.” He went on to presume that “upon the high plateaus of that great island suitable land might be found” for settlements.[34] At the same time, Moutet sent the Freeland-EMCOL representatives a private letter similar in tone and content to his public declaration. In his letter, Moutet reiterated his interest in the project and noted that the issue “is now being studied both by my officials and by the respective local authorities.”[35] The Freelanders, whose program Döblin had championed for years, had clearly swayed Moutet to their cause. Moutet’s pronouncement in January 1937 was hailed by territorialists as a French version of the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The Paris correspondent for Davar singled out the Freeland League’s role in obtaining what it cynically referred to as the “Moutet Declaration.”[36] The diplomatic Moutet had made no mention of a “national home” for the Jews in his pronouncement, as Lord Balfour had done two decades earlier. Nonetheless, Moutet sincerely believed that he could help Jewish “victims of political passions and religious and racial prejudice”[37] by resettling them in Madagascar.

In late 1936, several months before the Freeland League had set the “Moutet Declaration” in motion, members of the Zionist establishment discussed resettling European Jews in Madagascar as well. Dr. Nahum Goldmann, a cosmopolitan figure who co-founded the World Jewish Congress (WJC) with Rabbi Stephen Wise, the most powerful American Jew in the pre-war era, considered the French island a possible refuge for Poland’s beleaguered Jews. In a “strictly confidential” telegram to Wise, Goldmann reported that Colonel Józef Beck, Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, had asked the WJC to “intervene [with the] French government” regarding “Polish Jewish immigration [to] Madagaskar.” Goldmann informed Wise that the “French government [is] not opposed in principle” to the idea, and requested $5,000 from WJC coffers to fund an “experts commission” to the island.[38] In tandem, he encouraged Beck to establish “a governmental level study committee and be ready to present the French Government with a concrete plan” for Jewish resettlement there.[39] Goldmann also wrote to the Governor General of Madagascar suggesting that Jewish artisans, tailors, cobblers, masons, carpenters and merchants represent the vanguard of Jewish settlers.[40] Goldmann’s communiqué to Wise concluded that successful resettlement of Polish Jews in Madagascar would give the fledgling WJC “much prestige [and] importance.”[41]

Other Jewish organizations, including the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), considered relocating refugees to the island. The JDC’s two main decision makers in Europe met with Moutet’s assistant and other officials in June 1937 and came away convinced of France’s “sincere […] desire to make a fair trial in opening some of the French colonial possessions for Jewish immigration.” Though the JDC officials were wary of endorsing “the so-called ‘Beck plan’ of Jewish evacuation from Poland” to Madagascar, they concluded that “it would be a great mistake for the responsible Jewish organizations to sidetrack the proposition. It fully merits at least a thorough competent investigation,”[42] The JDC even considered contributing to the costs of resettling Jewish immigrants there.[43]

Official inquiries made by the Freeland League, the WJC, and the JDC, coupled with internal political forces in Poland and France, mounted through 1937. But by this time, Döblin had begun to distance himself from the Freeland League, and the Freeland League would soon distance itself from any effort to colonize Madagascar. What originated as a territorialist vision for Jewish revival and mass settlement championed by Döblin, quickly devolved into a notorious scheme for forced emigration endorsed by Polish anti-Semites, and later, the highest echelons of the Nazi leadership.

Bibliography

Archival and Unpublished Sources

Archive Nationales, Paris, France (AN)

Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel (CZA)

Hartley Library, Southampton, England (HL)

Weiner Library, London, England (WL)

“A propos d’un project d’établissement d’israélites dans les colonies françaises.”  Le Petit

Parisien. 16 Jan. 1937. p.2. [French]

Astour, Michael C. History of the Freeland League and of the Territorialist Idea

[געשיכטע פון דער פריילאנד-ליגע און פונעם טעריטאריאליסטישן געדאנק]. Vol. I & Vol. II. New

York: Freeland League, 1967. [Yiddish]

Bash, Françoise. “Gender and Survival: A Jewish Family in Occupied France, 1940-1944.”

Feminist Studies. Vol. 32. No. 2. (summer 2006): 299-331.

Chanoch, N. “Michtav M’London.” Davar.  9 Aug 1935 p. 2. [Hebrew]

חנוך, נ. “מכתב מלונדון.” דבר. 9 אוג. 1935 עמ’ 2.

Döblin, Alfred. Journey to Poland. Trans. Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Paragon, 1991.

[1926]

—. Briefe. Eds. Walter Muschg, Heinz Graber. Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1970. [German]

—. “Ziel und Charakter der Freiland-Bewegung.” in Horch. Schriften zu jüdischen Fragen.

Solothurn: Walter-Verlag, 1995. pp. 312-322. [German]
—. “Jews Renew Yourselves.” The Menorah Journal. Volume XXIII, No. 1, (April-June 1935):

pp. 80-87.

—. “Teritorialism un Neue-Yehuda.” Frayland.  [“טעריטאריאליזם און ניי-יהודה.” פריילאנד.]No. 3-4.

(Nov-Dec 1934): 14-25. [Yiddish]

—. “Gzar-Din un Veg fun de Maarav Yidn.” Frayland.  “גזר-דין און וועג פון די מערב-יידן.” פריילאנד]

No. 1-2. (Sept.-Oct. 1934): 42-49. [Yiddish]

—. “Tchiya Yehudit (part 8).” Turim. [“תחיה יהודית (ח).” טורים.] 8 Feb. 1934. pp. 5-6. [Hebrew]

—. “L’korei Ivrit.” Turim.  [“לקוראי עברית.” טורים.]8 Dec. 1933. p.1. [Hebrew]

Graber, Heinz. “Editor’s Introduction.” in Alfred Döblin. Journey to Poland. Trans. Joachim

Neugroschel. New York: Paragon, 1991.

Herman, N. “Hatzarat Moutet.” Davar. 1 Mar. 1937. p. 2. [Hebrew[

[הרמן, נ. “הצהרת מוטה.” דבר. 1 מרץ 1937. עמ’ 2.]

Horch, Hans Otto. Schriften zu jüdischen Fragen. Solothurn: Walter-Verlag, 1995. [German]

Huguet, Louis. “Alfred Döblin et le Judaisme.” Annales de la Universite d’Abidjan. Serie D

Annales de l’Université d’Abidjan. Série D, V.9. (1976): pp. 47-115. [French]

Kruk, Josef. Tahat Diglan Shel Shalosh Mahapehot: Rusim, Polanim, Yehudim. Vol. II. Trans.

Halamish and Moshe Hurvitz. Tel Aviv: Mahbarot le-sifrut, 1970. [Hebrew]

קרוק, יוסף. תחת דגלן של שלוש מהפכות: רוסים, פולנים, יהודים. כרך 2. תירגום: חלמיש ומשה הורביץ. תל אביב: מחברות לספרות, 1970.

Müller-Salget, Klaus. “Döblin and Judaism.” in A Companion to the Works of Alfred Döblin.

Eds. Roland Dollinger, Wulf Köpke, Heidi T. Tewarson. Rochester, NY: Camden House,

2004.

“Realist Attitude to the Jewish Problem.” Jewish Chronicle. 26 July 1935. pp. 36, 42.

Rosenthal, Leonard. The Pearl Hunter: An Autobiography. Trans. Herma Briffault. New York:

Henry Schuman, 1952.

Salomone, Sophie Romeuf. “Le Pouvoir Colonial et Les Communautes Etrangeres a

Madagascar 1896-1939.” Thesis. Univ. de Lille III, 1990. [French]

Tonini, Carla. Operation Madagascar. unpublished English ms. translation of Operazione

Madagascar: La Questione  ebraica in Polonia, 1918-1968. Bologna: CLUEB, 1999.

[Italian]

[2] Huguet. “Alfred Döblin et le Judaisme.” pp. 66-68.

[3] Huguet. “Alfred Döblin et le Judaisme.” pp. 66-68; Müller-Salget. “Döblin and Judaism.” p. 235.

[4] Quotations in this paragraph taken from Döblin. Journey to Poland. pp. 50, 102, 255.

[5] Minute book of Freeland League-London (date illegible). [CZA A330/14]

[6] Kruk.תחת דגלן. p. 448.

[7] Döblin. “Jews Renew Yourselves.” p. 84.

[8] Döblin. Letter to Elvira & Arthur Rosin. 4 July 1933. Briefe. p. 181.

[9] This and previous quote from: Döblin. “Jews Renew Yourselves.” p. 87.

[10] Döblin. Letter to Thomas Mann. 23 May 1935. Briefe. pp. 207-208.

[11] Quotations in this paragraph taken from: Döblin. “גזר-דין און וועג פון די מערב-יידן.” פריילאנד. No. 1-2. (Sept.-Oct. 1934): 42-49.

[12] Quotations in previous two paragraphs taken from: Döblin. “טעריטאריאליזם און ניי-יהודה.”  .פריילאנדNo. 3-4. (Nov-Dec 1934): 14-25.

[13] Döblin.  .טורים “לקוראי עברית.”8 Dec. 1933 p.1.

[14] Döblin. “תחיה יהודית (ח).” טורים . 8 Feb. 1934 p.5.

[15] Döblin. “Ziel und Charakter der Freiland-Bewegung.” Title.

[16] “Realist Attitude to the Jewish Problem.” Jewish Chronicle. 26 July 1935. p. 42.

[17] “Realist Attitude to the Jewish Problem.” Jewish Chronicle. 26 July 1935. p. 36, 42

[18] חנוך. “מכתב מלונדון.” דבר. 9 אוגוסט 1935. עמ’2.

[19] Quotations in this paragraph taken from: Döblin. “Ziel und Charakter der Freiland-Bewegung.” pp. 312-322.

[20] “Tribute to Israel Zangwill” Jewish Daily Post. 23 July 1935. n.p. [Zangwill Papers MS 294 18/3/2 HL]

[21] Döblin qtd. in Jewish Chronicle. 26 July 1935. p. 36, 42.

[22] Müller-Salget. “Döblin and Judaism.” pp. 238-239.

[23] Letter J. Brutzkus to J. Leftwich. 1 Mar. 1937 [CZA A330/14].

[24] Astour. געשיכטע פון דער פריילאנד-ליגע.Vol. I. pp. 238-246..

[25] Huguet. “Alfred Döblin et le Judaisme.” p. 98.

[26] Huguet. “Alfred Döblin et le Judaisme.” pp. 105-108. Döblin converted in November 1941 but kept it a secret until July 1947, in part because of the sensitivities of his Jewish friends.

[27] Astour. געשיכטע פון דער פריילאנד-ליגע.Vol. I. pp. 184-187.

[28] Astour. געשיכטע פון דער פריילאנד-ליגע.Vol. I. p. 186.

[29] Döblin. Briefe. pp. 216-217. Letter to Peter Döblin 18 Sept. 1937.

[30] Freeland League to M. Moutet. 16 Dec. 1936. [CZA A330/14]

[31] Bash. “Gender and Survival: A Jewish Family in Occupied France, 1940-1944.” p. 302.

[32] Astour. געשיכטע פון דער פריילאנד-ליגע. Vol. I. p. 191.

[33] Rosenthal. The Pearl Hunter. p. 128.

[34] This and previous quote from: “A propos d’un project d’établissement d’israélites dans les colonies françaises.”  Le Petit Parisien. 16 Jan. 1937. p.2.

[35] “Possibilities of Land Settlement in the French Colonies, America Joint Distribution Committee, European Executive Office, Paris. Sept. 1938.” Letter from M. Moutet to Freeland League-EMCOL 19 Jan, 1937 reproduced in this document, henceforth referred to as “Possibilities of Land Settlement in French Colonies.” [Archive Nationales AJ43/43]. Special thanks to Vicki Caron for helping me track down this source.

[36] הרמן. “הצהרת מוטה.” דבר.1 מרץ 1937. עמ’ 2.

[37] “A propos d’un project d’établissement d’israélites dans les colonies françaises.” Le Petit Parisien. 16 Jan. 1937. p.2.

[38] This and previous quotations from: Telegram N. Goldmann to S. Wise 4 Oct. 1936. [WJC Papers; WL A15/File 3 France 36-37]

[39] N. Goldmann qtd. in Tonini. Operation Madagascar. p.11. Special thanks to Carla Tonini for providing me with her unpublished translation of her monograph.

[40] N.Goldmann qtd. in Salomone. “Le Pouvoir Colonial et Les Communautes Etrangeres a Madagascar 1896-1939.” p. 222.

[41] Telegram N. Goldmann to S. Wise 4 Oct. 1936. [WJC Papers; WL A15/File 3 France 36-37]

[42] This and previous quote from: Letter to Charles J. Liebman from Dr. Bernhard Kahn and Dr. J. Rosen. 12 June 1937. In “Possibilities of Land Settlement in French Colonies.” [Archive Nationales AJ43/43]

[43] Summary of “Previous Efforts on Behalf of Jewish Settlements in French Colonies.” In “Possibilities of Land Settlement in French Colonies.” [Archive Nationales AJ43/43]