1933 anti-Nazi boycott

Examples of Nazi violence and harassment included placing and throwing stink bombs, picketing, shopper intimidation, humiliation and assaults.

[1] Unrelenting Nazi attacks on Jews in Germany in subsequent weeks led the American Jewish Congress to reconsider its opposition to public protests.

New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph M. Proskauer and James N. Rosenberg spoke out against a proposal for a boycott of German goods introduced by J. George Freedman of the Jewish War Veterans.

Honorary president Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise responded to Proskauer and Rosenberg, criticizing their failure to attend previous AJC meetings and insisting that "no attention would be paid to the edict" if mass protests were rejected as a tactic.

Speakers at the Garden included American Federation of Labor president William Green, Senator Robert F. Wagner, former Governor of New York Al Smith and a number of Christian clergymen, joining in a call for the end of the brutal treatment of German Jews.

[1][10][11] Rabbi Moses S. Margolies, spiritual leader of Manhattan's Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, rose from his sickbed to address the crowd, bringing the 20,000 people in the arena to their feet with his prayers that the antisemitic persecution cease and that the hearts of Israel's enemies should be softened.

However at the same time, Zionists were brokering the Haavara Agreement with Germany to open trade in exchange for sending German Jews to Palestine.

When German emigrants arrived in Palestine, they would receive a portion of their capital in the form of goods and the rest in pounds sterling.

First, the agreement would drastically increase German Jewish emigration, fulfilling a central plank of the Nazi Party platform.

Goebbels announced a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany of his own to take place on April 1, 1933, which would be lifted if anti-Nazi protests were suspended.

The Star of David was painted in yellow and black on retail entrances and windows, and posters asserting "Don't buy from Jews!"

[3] The Haavara Agreement, together with German rearmament and lessened dependence on trade with the West, had by 1937 largely negated the effects of the Jewish boycott on Germany.