A Rare Medal / Coin "A Nazi Travels to Palestine"

A medal struck in honour of the series of articles" A Nazi Travels to Palestine" which was published in the Nazi journal "Der Angriff" (The Attack). A memento of the cooperation that took place between the Nazi Party and the German Zionist Federation, in their mutual goal of relocating German Jews to Palestine. Germany, 1934.

The front of the medallion depicts a Star of David in the centre, surrounded by the inscription in German "A Nazi Travels to Palestine" (Ein Nazi fährt nach Palästina). The back depicts a Swastika in the centre and the words "And he writes about it in The Attack" (Und erzählt davon in Angriff).

In the beginning of the Nazi rule in Germany, the Zionist Movement was inclined to cooperate with the line that the Nazi government adopted at the time – encouraging immigration of German Jews to relocate to Palestine. In the spring of 1933, the leaders of the German Zionist Association decided to contact elements within the Nazi party who might support the Zionist cause. Kurt Tuchler, a German-Jewish lawyer and judge and member of the managing committee of the German Zionist Federation, contacted Leopold von Mildenstein, a senior Nazi officer who was head of the Jewish department of the SD (the security service of the SS and the Nazi party), and asked him to publish an article in the Nazi press about the Jewish settlements in Eretz Israel. In 1933, the two men travelled to Palestine with their wives and spent a month touring the country, to enable von Mildenstein to get an impression of the booming Jewish industrial, agricultural and settlement efforts in Palestine. In a report to Yad Vashem years later, Tuchler wrote, "The purpose of the visit was to create in an important Nazi newspaper an image that would promote the Zionist cause in Palestine." After their return to Germany, von Mildenstein published a series of 12 illustrated articles in the Nazi newspaper "Der Angriff" (The Attack), which was the mouthpiece of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister. To commemorate the articles, Goebbels struck this medallion.

The maker’s name L. Chr Lauer Nurnberg appears in very small script at the lower edge.

Produced in I believe a silvered bronze, the coin has a diameter of 35mm, is in very good condition and sits well in a blue velvet lined case of imitation leather.

A fascinating artefact relating to a little know piece of Nazi / Jewish history.