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The Jewish Question continues to attract more and more attention. In many quarters a new tendency toward freedom of the press is observed, and the long-concealed truth is getting itself spoken bit by bit. It has been thought worth while, before going on to other phases of the study of the Jewish Question, to present in this article a few of the informative or confirmatory articles that have appeared in the public press. It need not be said that, with a single possible exception, none of the writers or publications here quoted could be called “anti-Semitic.” Not even the most unreasonable Jew could append that term to any writer or publication here cited.
The Associated Press sent out a dispatch which was printed in American papers of August 24, as follows:
“Thousands of Russian Jews are crossing the Esthonian, Lithuanian and Polish borders every month, many sent from Soviet territory under protection of high Bolsheviki officials, according to travelers in the border states who recently have returned here. The opinion in neighboring states is that the exodus is prompted by fear of an approaching crisis.
“The fact that no appreciable organized Russian anti-Bolshevik movement has appeared since Baron Wrangel’s forces were dissipated, leads observers of the situation here to believe that, should the overthrow of the Soviets occur this winter, it will take the nature of a popular uprising, supported by such troops as are not at the front. Many fear it will result in a widespread anti-Jewish program.
“For these reasons every Jewish family of means, and many that are destitute, are attempting to get out of Russia. They have no desire to tarry in Lithuania or Esthonia, but are seeking to enter Germany, with the idea of eventually reaching America.”
To give the reader the background of this fear, we offer part of a letter from Kishinev which was received by a North Dakotan:
“My Dear Friend Gutsche:
“For one month no fugitives arrived, but now again many of them are coming from the Ukraine to Bessarabia, most of whom are Jews. They are a different lot than the former fugitives were; for they are wearing costly clothes, furs, precious stones, jewels, and so on, such as were seen before the war only by very well-to-do people, landowners and the like; they have money and money’s worth. There is no doubt that these fugitives had leading positions in the Bolshevik régime, perhaps they were commissars, or even ‘judges’ on the ‘Blood and Inquisition courts’ of the so-called ‘Tschreswytschaika’ or short ‘Tscheka’—their purses and pockets are filled, not with worthless paper money—for they themselves have manufactured that, millions and billions of it, which they have thrown before the Christian brood, the ‘goies’—no, filled with money and precious jewels which no more show traces of blood and tears, but shine and glitter the same as in those happy hours of their rightful owners.
“But the people over there (in Russia.—Ed.) are awakening; they wonder about the source of all this terror. The children of Judah know the answer thereto, but they prefer to leave the ground which is becoming unsafe to stand upon; it is getting too hot for them. The Nemesis is raising her head from out the blood of innocence which calls to heaven for revenge. Yes, they fear the result of their actions and wish to save their skins before it is too late. In this they succeed, but not always are they allowed to keep their furs, their stones and precious metals; they overlooked the Rumanians. These people are very vain and greedy for costly things! The newcomers are on their way to America and the doors on all borders are willingly opened them, even to the soldier in the army. Only on again! The faster, the better! I think that some day America will have so many Semites that they (the Semites) will be looked upon the same as the colored, the black, yellow and brown races.
“Imagine for a moment that there were no Semites in Europe. Would the tragedy be so terrible now? Hardly! They have stirred up the people in all countries, have incited them to war, revolution and communism. They believe in the saying that ‘there is good fishing in troubled waters.’
“But enough of ‘the chosen people.’ Some day they will reap what they have sown . . . .
“. . . . Another picture—Every three or four days a ‘razzia’ (domiciliary search, graze) is being conducted in the city. Terror, fear and oppression drive the people from the streets, looking for hiding places. The people do not work, eat or sleep. Only stamping, cursing patrouilles are seen on the streets with their victims. In this manner 200 or 300 persons are often driven together: former civil and military officials, teachers, landlords, business men, and so on (only Christians, seldom Jews); among them also women. This group is then led to the ‘Tschreswytschaika.’ In front of the group are 40 to 50 armed red guards, infantry and on horses, right and left about the same number of guards, in the rear several carriages or an automobile with machine gun, and behind that again infantry and horseback riders. When this group is seen on the streets, everyone flees terrified; occupants of houses peep through cracks and press their hands to their hearts to see—what?—Father, brother, son or other relatives led away from their once happy homes, perhaps never to return again. This they know, those behind doors and windows, where occur hysterical spells, heart failures and deaths. Words cannot express the terror of it all.
“And then at the ‘Tschreswytschaika’? There are youths, mostly circumcised, often half or wholly drunk! Should there be personal enemies among the ‘judges,’ the unfortunate ones are executed either the same day or the next one, but are sometimes also ‘tried’ like they ‘tried’ the heretics in the Inquisition chambers. Several of these creatures of the ‘Tschreswytschaika’ and especially a certain Wichmann—a Jew, of course—carry on terribly; he is the terror of the city and the flat land; he even kills Bolshevist Commissars and their wives should they now and then reveal a more humane feeling.
“They fear the reprisal and hasten across the borders, laden down with valuables.
“More suffering is caused in the cities by hunger and cold. The dead bodies are buried without coffins and often without clothes. How the people dwell in houses I shall, perhaps, relate next week. Enough for today. F. Horch.”
The freedom of the Balkan Jew from the hunger and suffering which afflict the native peoples is vividly set forth in the words of an American:
“Our ship is the first to enter Libau on a peaceful mission since the war, they say. At any rate, our arrival has caused a great excitement, on account of the food cargo we have for these people. At present we are tied up to a quay, in a narrow stream that seems to be also a sewer. Unloading our flour is a ticklish piece of work, due to the terrible hunger of the crowd that watches us. Whenever a bag breaks, people fight to scrape up the loose flour, which they put in cans along with a good portion of dirt that is mixed into it. . . . Everyone has a tin can and at noon there was almost a riot over a bucket of potato peelings that were tossed into the water. The people tied strings to their cans and went fishing for the peelings. They stand all day and beg us for food . . . . It is not a very pleasant sight—this crowd of emaciated, white-faced men and women, and big-eyed children.
“The most damnable thing about it all is the dozen Jews who flit like magpies through the crowd. They are young, soft, well-groomed and prosperous. They carry canes, wear new straw hats, and resemble the kind you see in the States. They have nothing in common with the other people. They have money, plenty of it, and they seem to think this ship is a floating pedlar’s cart and tobacco store. They come up the gangway and wave British five-pound notes in the air, offering them for a carton of cigarettes. Or, they have gold watches that they will trade for a few pounds of soap. From the looks that other people favor them with, I do not wonder that we hear about periodic slaughters of the Jews in Russia. These fellows look too prosperous in comparison with the rest of the population to suit me.”
The peculiar character of the Jewish cruelty in Russia is so little in accord with the character of the Jews as we propagandized Americans have been taught to conceive it, that even THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, in its desire to present a consistent account of Jewish activities as they relate to the United States, has not opened this special phase of the study of the Jewish psychology. The Sadism displayed throughout the Russian Terror has been discussed briefly in “The World Significance of the Russian Revolution,” by George Pitt-Rivers.
There is, however, American Jewish testimony on the same point. It is found in the April, 1921 number of the Hebrew Christian Alliance Quarterly. In an article entitled “Persecution Is Not the Monopoly of Christianity and Is Contrary to Its Principles,” the Rev. M. Malbert, B.A., of Ottawa, Ontario, says:
“We must now proceed to deal with our last point. The Jews blame Christianity for its persecuting spirit. They consider it a monstrous thing to persecute another person for his convictions. Now, the question is, are they themselves free from the persecuting zeal? I am going to show that real religious persecution is uniquely Jewish, and that they themselves have been the relentless persecutors. In the year 120 B.C., John Hyrcanus, son of Simon, the last of the Maccabean brothers, who fought against the Syrian hosts in defense of their religion, persecuted other religions. He destroyed the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizin. Next, he conquered the Idumeans and bade them choose between exile or Judaism. They chose the latter. That he made a mistake in forcing his religion on an unwilling people, may be seen in the treacherous Herodian dynasty, Idumean converts, who were a curse on the Jewish nation.
“The intolerant religious spirit among the Jews themselves is unique in history. In the Maccabean princes the royalty and the high priesthood were united in one person, King Alexander, third son of John Hyrcanus, who was a Sadducee. The Pharisees therefore hated him. In the year 95 B.C., on the Feast of Tabernacles, as he was officiating in his high priestly capacity in the Temple, instead of pouring the water on the altar, he spilled it at his feet. The congregation worshiping with the palm branches and citrons in their hands, noticing the water spilled at the high priest’s feet, started to pelt him with them. The king’s life was in danger and he was constrained to summon to his aid the Pisidian and Cilician mercenaries. Those fell on the people and slew 6,000 within the precincts of the Temple. The hostility of the Pharisees was more bitter against the king, and their hatred knew no bounds. But the king endeavored to make peace with them. He therefore summoned their chief men and told them that he was tired of the feuds and that he desired peace. What were their conditions? They replied, the death of the king. Then they actually set out to betray their country. They invited the Syrian king, Eucaerus, to invade Palestine and treacherously offered him their aid. Eucaerus advanced upon Judea with 43,000 men. The Pharisees kept their promise and fought in the camp of their country’s enemy against their king, who was eventually defeated. The poor king, the descendant of the heroic Maccabees, wandered about in the mountains of Ephraim. At last, 6,000 Pharisees, conscience-stricken, returned to him from the Syrian camp. With these 6,000 penitents, he was able to force the Syrians from Judea. But the majority still remained hostile and made war against him, but they were finally defeated and reaped the fruits of punishment that they deserved.
“The Jewish king himself was intolerant and he forced many heathen cities to embrace Judaism; those who refused were destroyed. Simon ben Shetach, president of the Synhedrion, condemned 80 women to be crucified for witchcraft. The son of Simon ben Shetach was accused by his enemies of some breach of a religious precept and although the father himself knew him to be innocent, he nevertheless sentenced him to death and allowed him to be executed.
“Between the school of Hillel and Shammai there was constantly bloodshed. The trial and execution of Jesus were the natural outcome of religous intolerance. The greatest service to God a Jew thought possible was to persecute the Christians. Rabbi Tarphon said that the Gilion, that is, the Gospels and all the writings of the Minim, that is, the Apostolic Epistles, should be burned even with the holy name of God in them. He maintained that Christianity was more dangerous than paganism and he would rather fly to a heathen Temple than to a meeting house of the Minim. A curse against the Minim was inserted into the Jewish daily prayers at that time, which is still used by the congregations. Bar-Kosibah, the false Messiah, persecuted the Christians without mercy. Even in the time of Justinian, in the sixth century, the Jews massacred Christians in Caesarea and destroyed their churches. When Stephanus, the governor, attempted to defend the Christians, the Jews fell on him and slew him. In 608, the Jews of Antioch fell upon their Christian neighbors and killed them with fire and sword. The Patriach Anastasius, surnamed the Sinaite, was disgracefully illtreated by them and his body dragged through the streets, before he was finally put to death. About 614, the Persians advanced upon Palestine and the Jews, after joining their standard, massacred the Christians and destroyed their churches. Ninety thousand Christians perished in Jerusalem alone. The Jews expected fair play from the Persians as a reward, but were treated worse by them than by the Christians. In 628, the Emperor Heraclius had retaken Palestine from the Persians and when marching through Tiberius, he was entertained by a wealthy Jew named Benjamin, the same man who invited the Jews to join the Persians against the Byzantines; the emperor asked him what had induced him to betray so great an animosity against the Christians, to which he replied that they were the enemies of his religion. Yet they claim the prophecy of Isaiah in the fifty-third chapter, to have been fulfilled in them. ‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth.’ They even persecuted Mohammed in the incipient stages of his career. They prejudiced the chief Arabs against him, helped his enemies to discredit him and endeavored to alienate his followers.”
The article continues to give in detail the persecution to which the Jews subjected their own people who were progressive. It reminds one of the warning given to Rabbi Isaac M. Wise by Rabbi Lilienthal, when the former was urging the reform of Judaism: “If you want to be Christ you must expect to be crucified.” (“Isaac Meyer Wise,” p. 92)
Readers of Gibbons’ “Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” will recall that in Volume 1, Chapter 16, he wrote severe words about the cruelty of the Jews. It will be agreed that only records of the most staggering cruelty could have driven the calm historian to the use of such terms. Readers will also observe, in the passage herewith quoted, that the desire for “the empire of the earth” which actuated the Jews of that period is the same as that discovered in the Protocols:
“From the reign of Nero to that of Antonius Pius, the Jew discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome, which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which they committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in the treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives; and we are tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arm of the legions against a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstitions seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman Government, but of human kind. The enthusiasm of the Jews was supported . . . . by the flattering promise which they derived from their ancient oracles, that a conquering Messiah would soon arise, destined to break their fetters and to invest the favorites of heaven with the empire of the earth.”
In footnotes to this passage, Gibbons gives revolting details of the methods used by the Jews of that period.
In all this work the Jewish Idea has the assistance of certain Christian sects who gloss over the inhumanity and immorality of certain courses of actions by saying that “these are doubtless the means by which God is giving the Jew his promised control of the world.” This is one form of the un-Biblical conception, the un-Scriptural teaching, that the Jews are God’s Chosen People.
Of all the sects following this error, none is more active than the so-called “Russellites,” the followers of Pastor Russell, and officially known as the International Bible Students’ Association.
It has been reported to THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT by numerous witnesses that Jewish interpreters at points of debarkation in Canada and the United States have circulated Russellite literature. The fact that a Jew would circulate any kind of Christian literature is sufficiently astonishing to cause inquiry. It is explained by the elaborate pro-Jewish propaganda which Russellism is conducting.
Not to go into this extensively at this time, suffice it to refer to handbill advertising in the Russian quarters of American cities. The fact that the literature is circulated among Russians and that meetings are held in Russian sections of our cities would seem to indicate a desire to explain to credulous Russians that Bolshevism, too, should be received as part of the circumstance by which the Jews are to obtain world rule. The handbills are headed “The Fifth Universal Kingdom,” and in every meeting reported the speakers have declared that in 1914 the rule of the world was taken away from “us”—that is, the non-Jews who are the so-called “Gentiles”—and was given to God’s Chosen People, who, according to this sect, are the Jews. Thus acquiescence in Bolshevism and every other form of revolutionary overturning is acquiescence in the will of God.
The teaching that world rule is already in the hand of the Jew is so novel, so unrelated to Biblical sources, as to warrant careful scrutiny for possible pro-Jewish connections.
But Palestine is not yet a fact, and other Bible students see in the present political movement a daring and God-defiant scheme destined to failure. Certainly there are great obstacles in the way—moral obstacles, matters of honor and humanity—which do not promise easily to disappear. The Jews of the world are discovering that they read too much into the Balfour Declaration and that Great Britain is not ready to violate her obligations to the Arabs. Jewish leaders are beginning to feel the weight of realities in the settlement of the land itself. The Jews are not going back. Those who have gone back are, a considerable and influential number of them, tainted with Russian Bolshevism.
The English people themselves are becoming dubious about the situation as is shown by the dispatch of the London correspondent of the Detroit News printed in the August 14 issue of that paper:
“Then there is the scarcity of accurate information from Palestine. The high commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, transmits reports to the British Government, but they are not published. Even the report which he made on going to Palestine two years ago to inquire into the exact status of affairs never has been made public. Lord Sydenham asked for it in the House of Lords, and, though Lord Curzon replied that the report contained nothing unsuitable for publication, it has never been given out. It is also charged that the Zionist Commission maintains a strict censorship; that even a petition to the king disappeared in transit; that letters have to be written guardedly. A series of articles by the special correspondent of the Times suddenly ceased, though the last, May 17, bore the line, ‘To Be Continued.’
“News from Palestine is exceedingly scanty, and no one knows whether what does come through is trustworthy. It has been printed that Sir Herbert Samuel does not dare ride through the streets of Jerusalem without an armored car in attendance. For these reasons there is a great deal of suspicion in England that all is not well in Palestine.”
The most outspoken word that has yet been uttered on the political dilemma in which Zionism places the Jew, appeared in an editorial entitled, “Political Judaism” in the Christian Century, of Chicago, a publication of weight and character:
“Political loyalty is one. Under the present world order it does not admit of division. The citizens of any nation may maintain a Platonic admiration for the political systems of neighboring nations, but their ultimate loyalty cannot be ‘Platonized.’ Spiritual Judaism is one thing. A Palestinian state, or a Jewish political organization anywhere else, is a very different thing—at least in Gentile estimation . . . .
“Once a Jewish state is set up in Palestine, in so far as it is accepted as the proper expression of Judaism, the Jew of the diaspora must surrender his religion. Is there any escape from this issue? The Jew can be a Jew anywhere, so long as his religious adherence carries with it no political implications. At least he can be an acknowledged Jew in every land were religious freedom is guaranteed or practiced. And even in states where an established religion other than Jewish debars him from the fullest and highest participation in the affairs of state, he can still hold to his religion without too serious embarrassment.
“But what would be the status of the Jew in any land of the present world when the profession of his religion would inevitably identify him with the fortunes and aspirations and diplomacy, even with the military policies, of a political state alien to the society of his residence and citizenship? The status seems, at least to the Gentile mind, altogether impossible. A revival of anti-Semitism, and its spread to lands where heretofore it has not prevailed, is not the least embarrassing of the inevitable results of such a move. How can the Jewish outlander maintain his own spiritual and mental integrity? It is not even necessary to imagine a possible precipitation of war between the new Jewish state and the land of his citizenship. War is not, let us hope, the necessary condition or even potentiality among separate political states. But it remains true, by the very nature of the present system of political organization, that political loyalty is one, and cannot be divided. Hyphenation, discriminating Americans are by this time well aware, must remain spiritual, or racial, or sentimental; it dare not become political under any circumstances.
“If the proposed new Jewish state in Palestine is to be and remain a province or dominion of the British Empire the way is smoothed for any Jew residing and claiming citizenship in any portion of the British Empire. But the way is decidedly roughened for the Jew elsewhere. The Briton is honored, especially in times of peace, in most regions of the world for his connection with so magnificent a political structure, but for that very reason his political loyalty is the more emphasized in his own mind and scrutinized by citizens of other political units. A Jew indentified with so insignificant a power as an independent Palestinian state must forever be, would, in many lands and on many occasions, be in a far more advantageous position when a resident of an outlying nation, than if he were recognized as a Briton. The anticipated dependence of a new Palestine upon British sovereignty thus fails to relieve the embarrassment of Zionism; it would seem rather to compound it.”
[THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, issue of 27 August 1921]