off from the main Zionist movement and continued to search for a location where Jews might settle and create a state, or at least an autonomous area. The idea of Jewish resettlement in Madagascar was promoted by British antisemites Henry Hamilton Beamish, Arnold Leese, and others. With the cooperation of the French, the Polish government commissioned a task force in 1937 to examine the possibility of settling Polish Jews on the island. The head of the commission, , felt the island could accommodate 5,000 to 7,000 families, but Jewish members of the group estimated that, because of the climate and poor infrastructure, only 500 or even fewer families could safely be accommodated. In Nazi Germany Racism and antisemitism were basic tenets of the Nazi Party and the Nazi government. Discrimination and violent attacks against Jews began immediately after the seizure of power in 1933. Violence and economic pressure were used by the Nazis to encourage Jews to voluntarily leave the country. By 1939, around 250,000 of Germany's 437,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, Argentina, the United Kingdom, and other countries, as well as the British Mandate of Palestine. The Nazi leadership seized on the idea of deporting the remaining German Jews overseas. Barren, unproductive lands were viewed as appropriate destinations as this would prevent the deportees from flourishing in their new location. In his May 1940 memorandum to Hitler, Concerning the Treatment of the Alien Population in the East, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler declared that he hoped to see "the term 'Jew' [...] completely eliminated through the massive immigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony". Planning begins Initial discussions began to take place in 1938 among Nazi ideologues such as Julius Streicher, Hermann Göring, Alfred Rosenberg, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Ten per cent of Jews under German jurisdiction by that date were Polish nationals. Józef Lipski, the Polish ambassador to Germany, expressed his country's reluctance to take them back, and the Polish government decreed that Polish passport holders would not be permitted to return except under specific conditions. When Ribbentrop raised the matter with French foreign minister Georges Bonnet in December of that year, Bonnet expressed French reluctance to receive more German Jews and inquired if measures could be taken to prevent their arrival. France itself was contemplating how to deport some 10,000 Jews and considered whether Madagascar might be an appropriate destination. Planning for German