Joel Brand Eugen Band. He cabled the Jewish Agency in Istanbul to say he was on his way, and arrived by German diplomatic plane on 19 May. Paul Rose writes that Brand had no idea at this point that the deportations to Auschwitz had already begun. Brand had been told by the Jewish Agency by return cable that "Chaim" would meet him in Istanbul. Convinced of the importance of his mission, he believed this was Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, later the first president of Israel. In fact the man who had arranged to meet him was Chaim Barlas,
Chaim Weizmann Weizmann was a strong advocate for "those governmental grants which are necessary to the achievement of the Zionist purpose" in Palestine, as stated at Basel, he persuaded many Jews not to wait for future events, During World War I, at around the same time he was appointed Director of the British Admiralty's laboratories, Weizmann, in a conversation with David Lloyd George, suggested the strategy of the British campaign against the Ottoman Empire. From 1914, "a benevolent goodwill toward the Zionist idea" emerged in Britain when intelligence revealed how the Jewish Question could support imperial interests against the Ottomans. Many of