Oscar Wassermann (1869 - 1934), head of the managing board of the Deutsche Bank between 1923 - 1933, who described himself as a non-Zionist but was president of Keren Hayesod (The Foundation Fund) the fund raising agency for Jewish settlement in Palestine, and in 1932 became the honorary chairman of the Administrative Committee of the Jewish Agency, the de-facto Jewish government of British Mandate Palestine. He believed all Jews, whether Zionists or not, should support Jewish settlement in Palestine.
Pierre van Paassen (1895 - 1968), Dutch-born Canadian journalist, Unitarian minister, philosemitic, Zionistic and staunchly anti-Nazi; pictured at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal during 1945.Van Paassen has featured before on this blog, last year I re-published an article he wrote in 1933 about interviewing Wilhelm Frick the first member of the NSDAP to attain political office who was later tried and hanged at Nuremberg. During the interview Van Paassen put it to the then German Minister of the Interior:"... several Jewish bankers are backing Herr Hitler financially and that a Jewish bank is backing Prince Starhenberg in Austria. Since you say you are going to act strongly against the Jews, these Jewish banks are indirectly your aids. How can you speak of Jewish solidarity under the circumstance?"
I've recently discovered another article from 1933 by Van Paassen in which he repeats and expands on his Jewish bankers were financing Hitler and the NSDAP claims:"I do not blame those Jewish financiers who pulled Hitler out of the ditch by financing the Nazi Organization. It was in their interest to do so. Class interest far outweighs racial or religious associations. These men simply were consistent capitalists. They looked after and saved the interests of big business and finance in a critical hour.There is nothing to be gained in denouncing these men as traitors to the Jewish people. They never had anything in common with the Jewish masses except that they have always tried "as great Jewish Leaders" in Germany to exert their influence on the Jewish masses in one issue or another. Herr Oscar Wassermann is loyal to his class in society. Inflexibly loyal. Nothing in the world is capable of coming between him and that loyalty."Van Paassen's allegation that Oscar Wassermann, the effective CEO of the Deutsche Bank, was providing funds for the NSDAP is corroborated by something Heinrich Bruening, Hitler's predecessor as German Chancellor, wrote in 1948:"... from October 1928 the two largest regular contributors to the Nazi Party were the general managers of two of the largest Berlin banks, both of the Jewish faith, and one of them the leader of Zionism in Germany."
