In the spring of 1933, four people gathered on a platform at a Berlin railway station. They were about to board a train to Trieste (in Italy), where they were supposed to board a ship to the Land of Israel. What made this group unusual was the fact that it consisted of two couples, one Jewish, the other Nazi. This is the story of

Contacts Between Zionists and Nazis

It was two months after Hitler's appointment as chancellor of the German Reich and his first legislation against non-Aryans. The two couples were traveling on behalf of the Nazi Party and the Zionist Federation in Germany. They were engaged in a mission that was meant to determine the fate of German Jewry.

The Nazis who boarded the train were Baron Leopold von Mildenstein and his wife. Von Mildenstein was a member of the Nazi Party and the SS. Their Jewish companions were Kurt Tuchler, an official of the Zionist Federation in Germany, and his wife. Their shared desire to make Germany "free of Jews" brought them on this journey to the Land of Israel, although their goals were entirely different.

Von Mildenstein was born in 1902 in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into a family belonging to the lowest stratum of the Austrian nobility. He trained as an engineer. In 1929 he joined the Nazi Party, and in 1932 he joined the SS, becoming one of the first Austrians to do so.

He saw the Zionist idea as a solution to the Jewish problem. The Zionist movement was inclined to cooperate in carrying out this solution. On April 7, 1933, a few days after the Nazis came to power, the Juedische Rundschau, the newspaper of the Zionist Federation of Germany, declared that of all sectors of the Jewish population, only the Zionist Federation of Germany was capable of engaging with the Nazis in good faith as "honest partners."

The Jewish Federation tasked one of its activists, Kurt Tuchler, with reaching out to potential supporters of Zionism within the Nazi Party, with the aim of facilitating the immigration of German Jews to the Land of Israel. Tuchler approached von Mildenstein and asked him to write something positive in the Nazi press about the settlement of Jews in the Land of Israel. Von Mildenstein agreed to this journalistic assignment on the condition that he be allowed to visit Mandatory Palestine.

Dr. Kurt Tuchler was a German Jewish lawyer and judge, one of the leaders of German Zionism and a public activist, and one of the founders and leaders of the German Jewish youth movement Blau Weiss, German for Blue-White. He was also one of the founders of the well-known investment firm "Moritz and Tuchler."

In a report Tuchler later submitted to the Yad Vashem archives, he wrote: "Our aim was to create an atmosphere in an important Nazi newspaper that would advance the project of building in the Land of Israel." Mildenstein and Tuchler spent a month together in the country. Mildenstein himself stayed for six months, touring the country from end to end, meeting many Jews and Arabs, and being deeply impressed. He returned to Germany an enthusiastic supporter of Zionism and even began learning Hebrew.

"Tel Aviv was the Jewish city of the Land of Israel, a city without gentiles," von Mildenstein wrote, alluding to Hugo Bettauer's 1922 novel The City Without Jews. "Only Jews live here, only Jews work here, only Jews trade, bathe, and dance here." The city's language, he noted, was Hebrew, but although the language was ancient, the city itself, with its broad boulevards and attractive shops, had a very modern appearance. He visited Ben Shemen, Givat Brenner, Haifa, and Safed.

And in the summer of 1935, when he held the SS rank of Untersturmführer, Mildenstein attended the 19th Zionist Congress in Lucerne as an observer attached to the delegation of German Jews.

He was the one who recruited Adolf Eichmann and, in 1937, sent him to Palestine to see whether it was suitable for receiving the Jews.

The Journey to the Land of Israel

As promised, Mildenstein published a series of twelve articles in Joseph Goebbels's Nazi newspaper, describing his journey in the Land of Israel. His account of the settlement and Zionist activity was sympathetic and positive. Following the articles, the newspaper issued a coin titled "A Nazi Travels to Palestine." On one side of the coin was a swastika, and on the other... a Star of David.

One conclusion of this Nazi activity was that it was worthwhile to explain to Jews that their place was in the Land of Israel and encourage them to leave voluntarily. At first, this was done in very cultured ways, for example, through theater. To this end, the Nazis made contact with the Zionist "Barak" theater.

When Mildenstein returned from the Land of Israel to Germany, he also took some souvenirs with him. Among other things, records.

Shortly before the outbreak of war, Kurt Tuchler visited the Gestapo offices in Berlin and, he later recounted, heard "Song of the Valley" playing in one of them.

Von Mildenstein left the Jewish Department in the Nazi Party. His replacement was Eichmann, who adopted a different idea for the Jewish problem: the "Final Solution."

Kurt Tuchler, his wife, and their daughter immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1936.

Von Mildenstein continued to keep in touch with the Tuchler family after they were in the Land of Israel. Once a year, he sent them a Hebrew greeting for Rosh Hashanah.

Kurt Tuchler and his wife lived to an old age. Kurt Tuchler died in 1978, aged 83. Gerda Tuchler died in 2006, aged 98.

After Gerda Tuchler's death, family members came to clear the couple's belongings from their apartment in Tel Aviv. They found piles of objects, photographs, letters, and documents, including the coin.

It was then that they learned about the Tuchlers' connections with Mildenstein and their joint visit to the Land of Israel, which they had not spoken about during their lifetimes.

Kurt and Gerda Tuchler's grandson, film director Arnon Goldfinger, made a documentary film based on these discoveries, titled The Flat. The film won the 2011 Ophir Award for Best Documentary Film.