by Jack Cooper
At its inception, the Ballets Russes was funded by a Jew, Gabriel Astruc, and was helped by another Jew, Baron Gunzberg. The Ballets Russes, founded and brought to prominence by Jews, was not strong enough to confer special privileges on Bakst. Although his father was a privileged Jew and Leon was already world famous, he still could not regain admission to St. Petersburg as late as 1912 because he was Jewish.4
The son of a peddler, and himself a former military tailor in the Crimean War, Bakst was – for a time – the teacher of the famous Jewish artist Marc Chagall. Bakst’s work is still shown in exhibits of Russian art.5
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1. Charles Spencer, Leon Bakst and the Ballets Russes (London: Academy Editions, 1995), 225.
2. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 411.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 412.
5. Alfred Warner, “Leon Bakst,” Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-ROM Edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1997).
...one anti-Semitic writer could have so many editors
In 1864, the French writer Maurice Joly wrote a political pamphlet called “Dialogues in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu” that attributed ambitions of world domination to Napoleon III.1 Joly seems to have borrowed the idea from a tawdry novel by Eugène Sue, The Mysteries of the People, which describes a similar imagined Jesuit plot.
In 1868, German anti-Semite Hermann Goedsche, using the pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe, wrote a novel called Biarritz in which representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel meet with the devil. The plot is based on a scene in a work by Dumas, Joseph Balsamo, which describes a secret meeting held by the “Unknown Superiors,” but Goedsche brought in elements from Joly and Sue, and made the Jews the plotters.2 Goedsche’s story was again copied and modified by members of the Russian secret police, who, in an 1873 pamphlet entitled “The Jews, Masters of the World,” reported the secret meeting as if it were fact.3
In an effort to strengthen Czar Nicholas II, they rewrote Goedsche’s work showing Jews as enemies of the czar and plotting to take over the world. The czar was not taken in.4 However, the story refused to die. A right-wing Russian political group called the Black Hundreds came out with its own version, the first to use the title Protocols of Zion.5 During the Russian Revolution, anti-revolutionary propagandists used the Protocols to incite the masses against the “Jewish Revolution.” In 1921, a British journalist exposed the fraudulent nature of the Protocols, but met with limited acceptance.6
The Germans, seeking to explain their defeat in World War I, seized upon the Protocols as the “stab in the back” inflicted on them by the Jews. In 1934, the Swiss government prosecuted and convicted the disseminators of the Protocols. This did not dissuade the Nazis from extensive propaganda use of the Protocols. Indeed, Hitler had mentioned the Protocols in his book Mein Kampf.7
To this day the Protocols are still being used by the Arabs in their struggles with Israel. Additional research by a British university professor has traced in detail the fraudulent nature of the Protocols, but the beat goes on.8
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1. Leon Poliakov, “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” Encyclopedia Judaica, CD–ROM Edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1997).
2. Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 136.
3. Ibid.
4. Poliakov, “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.”
5. Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), 76.
6. Poliakov, “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.”
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
...a Jewish banker helped establish the German Empire
In 1866, Otto von Bismarck, the head of the German state, was about to embark on a war which was to establish the German Empire. Finding it difficult to obtain financing for this expensive undertaking, Bismarck turned to his Jewish personal advisor and banker Gerson Bleichroeder. The money was advanced and Bismarck went to war. In 1869, under Bismarck’s leadership, the subject of Jewish emancipation was raised. The final statement read in part: “All still existing limitations of the... civil rights which are rooted in differences of religious faith are hereby annulled.”1
At a later date, when Bismarck’s opponents in the Reichstag attempted to embarrass the chancellor for his Jewish connection, Bismarck replied: “It is true that Bleichroeder brought me in the year 1866 the means for waging war which nobody else wanted to advance to us. This was a deed for which I was obligated to feel gratitude. As an honest person, I don’t like to be spoken ill of, nor have a Jew say that I have used him and then held him in contempt in spite of services rendered which I, as a statesman, had to value highly.”2
This was a remarkable statement from a man whose past was documented with sporadic incidents of anti-Semitism. However, Bismarck had enough character to look beyond religion to the worth of a man. Bleichroeder was eventually raised to the nobility.
Alas, times did change. In 1881, Bismarck said that “while he was opposed to anti-Semitic agitation, he had done nothing against it because of its courageous stand against the Progressives.” With this utterance, anti-Semitism gained the respectability it was lacking.3
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1. Joachim O. Ronall, Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-ROM Edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1997).
2. Elliot Rosenberg, But Were They Good for the Jews? Over 150 Historical Figures from a Jewish Perspective (Secaucus, NJ: Carol, 1997), 177.
3. Howard M. Sachar, The Course of Modern Jewish History (New York: Vintage, 1998), 260–61.
...Rasputin had a Jewish business manager
The Romanov dynasty in Russia was perhaps the most anti-Semitic court in the history of Russia. The very superstitious Czarina Alexandra came under the influence of an illiterate preacher named Grigory Yefimovich Novykh, better known as Rasputin. The Czarina “believed that Rasputin had been sent by God to represent the mystical union between the peasants and autocracy.”1 Once Rasputin became ensconced in a position of influence, he began to exploit his station for personal gain.
Typical of Rasputin’s dealings was his experience with a wealthy Jew expelled from St. Petersburg for illegally residing there. Rasputin used his influence to get the Jew residence privileges. For his efforts, Rasputin received an expensive fur coat. So extensive were Rasputin’s bribery cases that he hired a Jewish business manager to handle his booming financial affairs.2
Thus it was that under the very watchful eyes of the violently anti-Semitic Romanovs, Jews and other sufferers under czarist persecution could benefit.
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1. Elliot Rosenberg, But Were They Good for the Jews? Over 150 Historical Figures from a Jewish Perspective (Secaucus, NJ: Carol, 1997), 200.
2. Ibid.
...an anti-Semitic Jew coined the word anti-Semitism
In 1879 Wilhelm Marr, the son of a Jewish actor, published a German-language pamphlet entitled “The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism.” He accused the Jews of developing “industry and commerce in order to achieve world domination” and cultivating “liberalism as a façade for their activities.”1 As the founder of the Anti-Semitic League, Marr was able to attract quite a sizeable following, including members of the German intelligentsia. He also preached racial purity. According to Marr, the struggle between Jews and Germans would only by decided by victory of one and death of the other. In 1912, eight years after Marr’s death, the league that he founded adopted racism as its policy. Marr is seen as a major link in German racism leading up to the Holocaust.2
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1. Howard M. Sachar, The Course of Modern Jewish History (New York: Random House, 1990), 234.
2. Ibid.
...Wagner hated Jews but he needed one named Hermann Levi
In 1881 Hermann Levi was probably the foremost conductor in all of Europe. He was also very clos
e with the well-known anti-Semitic composer Richard Wagner. As the time came close for Levi to conduct Wagner’s Parsifal at the notoriously anti-Semitic Beyreuth Festival, pressure began to intensify on Wagner to replace Levi on the podium and “to keep his work pure and not allow a Jew to conduct it.”1 Wagner was not willing to entrust his masterwork to anybody but Hermann Levi. He was heard to say, “No Levi, no Parsifal.”2
In 1888, when illness prevented Levi from conducting the Parsifal at the Beyreuth Festival, word went out from the festival that “Parsifal had at last been delivered from ‘Jewish hands’ and given back to Christianity.”3 A critic of the festival that had been “given back to Christianity” ranked it “scandalously inferior.”4
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1. Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 220.
2. Ibid., 222.
3. Ibid., 224.
4. Ibid.
...a Chinese shopkeeper priced his goods in Hebrew
The ancient Jewish congregation of Kaifeng, China, began to attract much attention in the late 1800s and on into the twentieth century. Many people and organizations had good intentions, but there was little they could do to rescue the nearly extinct congregation from sinking into oblivion due to emigration.
One of the visitors on a potential rescue mission was Noach Mishkowsky. In conversation with a shopkeeper, Mishkowsky tried to ascertain how much of his Jewish heritage the man had retained. The shopkeeper knew that his forbears were monotheists, rested one day a week, and avoided polygamy. He did know there was a language called Hebrew, and he was familiar with the characters. His wife was a Buddhist, but he considered his children to be Jewish.1
Mishkowsky was interested in purchasing a basin in the shop and inquired as to the price. The man looked at the bottom of the basin and told him it cost twenty-five units of Chinese money. Mishkowsky looked at the markings on the basin and was astonished to see the Hebrew letters chaf-hay, the numerical equivalent of twenty and five.2
In Jewish circles, it is quite common to use Hebrew letters in listing dates and in the pagination of books written in Hebrew. How did this shopkeeper have this particular knowledge? In answer to Mashkowsky’s question, the shopkeeper indicated that it was the numbering system used by his father and his grandfather. He did not know the names of the letters or the phonemes they represented.3
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1. Michael Pollack, Mandarins, Jews, and Missionaries: The Jewish Experience in the Chinese Empire (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1980), 229.
2. Ibid., 229.
3. Ibid.
...Jews were too intelligent to be tolerated
For many years, the Russian government was always dealing with what it called “the Jewish problem.” Government action regarding “the Jewish problem” usually took the form of expulsions and/or limitation of occupational pursuits permitted to Jews. There seemed to always be some perceived injustice perpetrated by the Jews against the Russian populace.
In 1881, following widespread and horrendous pogroms against Jewish communities, the governor general of Kiev, a man named Drenteln, offered to the czar an astounding rationale for the suppression of Jewish mercantile activity. Among other things, Drenteln said that legal measures were necessary “in order to counteract ‘the intellectual superiority of the Jews.’”1
Drenteln also advocated the adoption of measures “to shield the Christian population against so arrogant a tribe as the Jews, who refuse on religious grounds to have close contact with the Christians.”2 At the same time, the official Church position was that Christians ought to maintain their distance from Jews, following the Christian injunction to “hate the murderers of the Savior.”3
In an era when machines and brain power were rapidly replacing muscle power, the Russian government was striving to neutralize the intellectual gifts of an entire segment of its population. Others would make that same mistake.
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1. Simon M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1918), 276.
2. Ibid., 276.
3. Ibid., 379.
...In czarist Russia, Jewish families had only one son
During the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the czarist army had a policy of not drafting “only sons” into the military. They would also exempt sons who were the sole support of elderly parents.
It was in this area that there arose a practice of families having “only sons.” The first male child would receive the family’s surname and be recorded as the son of the family. Each subsequent birth of a male child would be recorded with a different surname as the child of an entirely new set of parents.
Other males might be recorded as having died in infancy and still others were recorded as starting life as four-year-olds to make them eligible at an earlier age to be the sole support of aging parents. It was rare indeed for a son to have a “brother.”1 Such were the lengths to which Jewish families had to go to ensure the safety of their children.
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1. Yaffa Eliach, Once There Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok(Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), 12.
...Jews kept British and German guns firing in World War I
In 1916, the British war effort in World War I began to experience a dire shortage of acetone, a vital ingredient of cordite, which in turn was necessary for the manufacture of munitions. Chaim Weizmann, the famous Zionist, was also a renowned chemist. He devised a system of extracting acetone from corn, thereby keeping the British from running out of ammunition.1
On the German side, the army was suffering from a shortage of ammonia, also an essential ingredient for the manufacture of munitions. Fritz Haber, a German-Jewish chemist, was able to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen. For this he won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and the German guns did not fall silent. Haber, as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Research Institute, was also instrumental in developing the German chemical weapons chlorine gas and mustard gas, which were so deadly during World War I.
After the war, Haber continued to be the leading chemist of Germany, but when Hitler came to power, he instructed Haber to fire all the Jewish employees. Haber, who by this time had left Judaism, refused to do so and resigned from his position.2
In an ironic twist of fate, after leaving the Kaiser Wilhelm Research Institute, Haber was offered a position at the Seiff Institute in Palestine by none other than Chaim Weizmann, the man who was his scientific opponent during the war.3
Haber set out for Palestine to assume his new position, but his health began to fail him and he died in Switzerland, still wondering why his country, for which he had done so much, would not protect him from what was to come.
Weizmann, on the other hand, went on to become a vital force in the founding of the State of Israel and was its first president.
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1. Julian L. Meltzer, “Chaim Weizmann,” Encyclopedia Britannica (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990).
2. Samuel Aaron Miller, “Fritz Haber,” Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-ROM Edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1997).
3. Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (New York: Avon Books, 1984), 225.
...Jews had German army helmets engraved on their tombstones
The most prestigious member of the Jewish community is the Kohen (priest), a descendent of Aaron. One of his functions in the services held in the synagogue was to offer a benediction with his hands shaped in a triangle with the thumbs touching and the forefingers outstretched and touching. This image was often placed on the tombstone of a Kohen.
Next in the hierarchy of Jews is the Levite, a descendent of the tribe of Levi. The Levite assisted the Kohen during Temple times. One of his functions was to pour water onto the hands of the Kohen. Thus, we often see a water pitcher engraved on the tombstone of a Levite.
On the High Holy Days, or other momentous occasions, a ram’s horn, or shofar, is blown in the synagogue. The shofar blower often had the shofar engraved on his tombstone.
The mohel, or circumciser, might have the inscription of a knife to denote his occupation in life.
In an extreme bit of irony, Jewish veterans of the German army, proud of their service to Germany, especially in World War I, often had the distinctive German army helmet engraved on their tombstones.1
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1. Peter M. Daly, “Funeral Symbolism on Jewish Tombstones and Monuments,” Constructions of Death, Mourning and Memory Conference, Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey (Oct 27–29, 2006); Nolan Menachemson, A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries (Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2007).
...you can pay for it, but you can’t use it
The end of World War I and the convening of the peace conference at Versailles brought high hopes for the Jews. Written into the treaty were guarantees of equal treatment for the Jews.1 A mood of exhilaration accompanying the treaty and its assurances of civil rights for the Jews prompted a Jewish businessman from Rumania to demonstrate his goodwill for all the citizens of the university town of Cernauti. He had a fine new social center constructed and furnished for the benefit of the university’s students. “The first step taken by the authorities was to exclude any Jewish student from the use of the new center.”2