A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (35 page)

Why did the great powers back down? Some historians point out that the treaty process was a long one and that most nations had other priorities and interests. Perhaps they felt that they had done all they could and it was time to move on. Regardless of their motives, the decision to accept the compromise had consequences.

By the end of the 1800s, only a handful of Romania’s 250,000 Jews were citizens, and even they experienced constant persecution and discrimination. In 1891, for example, the government evicted all Jewish children from state schools and then blocked the French alliance’s attempts to open schools for Jewish students. Whenever elections were held, the government would inflame public opinion by announcing a policy of “repression” against “the Jews.” Before long, thugs would roam Jewish neighborhoods, attacking people, looting stores, and setting fires. By the turn of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Romanian Jews were leaving the country. Between 1881 and 1914, about 74,000 poured into the United States—a little over 28 percent of Romania’s total Jewish population in the late 1800s.

Western Jews had defended the rights of Romanian Jews with determination, passion, and skill. In the end, however, they were unable to provide Romanian Jews with even a small measure of safety and security. Yet to some Europeans, the fact that Jews had tried to influence the Congress of Berlin was proof that Jews had a world government that threatened the citizens of every country. Wilhelm Marr, a German journalist who believed in that myth, tried to document the power of European Jews in an 1878 pamphlet entitled “The Victory of Judaism over Germandom.” He wrote:

In this French cartoon, James Rothschild is shown controlling the world. Notice that the crown on his head includes a golden calf. Note, too, that his hands look more like claws than the hands of a man.

There is no stopping them….
German culture has proved itself ineffective and powerless against this foreign power. This is a fact; a brutal [inescapable] fact. State, Church, Catholicism, Protestantism, Creed and Dogma, all are brought low before the Jewish tribunal, that is, the [irreverent] daily press [which the Jews control]
.

The Jews were late in their assault on Germany, but once they started there was no stopping them
.

Gambetta, Simon and Crémieux were the dictators of France in 1870–1871…
.

Poor, Judaized France!

In England, the Semite Disraeli [Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli], a German hater…, holds in his vest pocket the key to war and peace in the Orient [the East]
.

Who derived the real benefit at the Congress of Berlin from the spilled blood of the Orient? Jewry. The Alliance Israélite Universelle [French Universal Israelite Alliance] was first in line. [Romania] was forced to open officially its doors and gates to destructive Semitism. Jewry did not yet dare to make the same demand of Russia. But, this demand, too, will soon come.
²⁰

The pamphlet was widely read even though it was filled with errors. Jews did not control the press in any country. Although Crémieux was a Jew, he was not a dictator or a head of state; he did serve as France’s minister of justice in 1870. Leon Gambetta, the president of the French Chamber of Deputies in 1879, and Jules Francois Simon, a minister of education in 1870, were not dictators either. Nor were they Jews; both men were Christians. “The Jews” have never controlled France, even though a few individual Jews have held important government positions.

As for England, Marr referred to Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, a member of the Anglican Church, as a “Semite” because Disraeli was born to Jewish parents. To Marr and a growing number of other Europeans, all Jews, regardless of their religious beliefs, belonged to the “Semitic race.” In the 1800s, many European and American scientists believed that humankind was divided into “races,” one of which was the “Semitic race.”
^*

Marr viewed Jews as more than just members of a distinct “race”: in his view, theirs was a dangerous and alien race. He used the word
antisemitism
to describe his opposition to Jews. He also founded the League of Antisemites in Berlin in 1879 to combat the threat he imagined Jews posed. The group tried to turn antisemitism into a popular political movement. Although it never attracted many members, another political party founded a year earlier by Adolf Stoecker—the Christian Socialist Worker’s Party—had more success.

At first Stoecker’s party focused more on the social effects of industrialization and the need for German society to rededicate itself to Christianity and return to Germanic rule in law and business. Antisemitism was a
relatively minor theme. The party gained in popularity only after it began to emphasize an antisemitic agenda. Stoecker and other members demanded that German Jews renounce their supposed dream of ruling Germany and called on the government to limit the number of Jews allowed in certain professions and universities. Like Marr, Stoecker and his followers were convinced that Jews belonged to a separate and dangerous “race.” And they claimed that modern “science” justified discrimination against Jews.

By the end of the century, antisemitism had found a home almost everywhere in Europe and beyond. Every country interpreted racist ideas a little differently. In Germany, Ernst Haeckel, a biologist, popularized the idea by combining it with romantic notions about the German
Volk
, or people. In a book called
Riddles of the Universe
, he divided humankind into “races” and ranked them. Not surprisingly, “Aryans”—the mythical ancestors of the German people—were at the top of his list.

Scientists who tried to show that more differences existed within a so-called “race” than between one “race” and another were ignored. In the late 1800s, for example, the German Anthropological Society conducted a study to determine whether there were racial differences between Jewish and Aryan children. After studying nearly seven million students, the society concluded that the two groups were more alike than different. Historian George Mosse said of the study:

This survey should have ended controversies about the existence of pure Aryans and Jews. However, it seems to have had surprisingly small impact. The idea of race had been infused with myths, stereotypes, and subjectivities long ago, and a scientific survey could change little. The ideal of pure, superior races and the concept of a racial enemy solved too many pressing problems to be easily discarded. The survey itself was unintelligible to the uneducated part of the population. For them, Haeckel’s
Riddles of the Universe
was a better answer to their problems.
²¹

So the myth that Jews belonged to a distinct and inferior race continued to grow throughout Europe. That myth gave individuals and governments a new excuse for discrimination and persecution. It was based not on ethnicity or religion (although the myth was sometimes expressed in religious and cultural terms) but on “race.”

“The Snake… Crept out of the Marshes” (1880–1905)

“Now different times began, new songs were heard. The snake that had not dared to show its face in the daylight now crept out of the marshes. Antisemitism broke out.” With these words, Pauline Wengeroff, a Jew who lived in the Russian Empire, described a sharp rise in antisemitism in the late 1800s.

This new burst of antisemitism came at a time when the Industrial Revolution was altering life almost everywhere. The revolution had begun in England in the late 1700s with the invention of machines powered by steam. That invention set off a chain reaction, with each new innovation leading to thousands of others. By the late 1800s, inexpensive machine-made products could be found in almost every country, as improvements in transportation connected even remote places to the rest of the world. These changes created new kinds of jobs, while many older occupations became obsolete.

The Industrial Revolution changed more than the way goods were made and distributed; it also altered the way societies were organized. More people left the countryside to find work in the many factories that sprang up in large cities. Changes also took place in governments. By the 1880s, after more than a century of revolutions, even the most absolute rulers were aware of the power of public opinion and the dangers of unrest in the streets.

As with any major change, some people benefited from the various revolutions, while others lost everything. Those who suffered losses were often very angry and looking for someone to blame for the disturbing changes in their lives. In Europe, some revived old stereotypes of “the Jews” as exploiters of the poor and usurers who get rich from the financial misfortunes of others. These stereotypes were increasingly intertwined with the myth that Jews were an “evil race” bent on dominating the world.
That combination proved to be a disaster for Jews not only in autocracies like Russia but also in democracies like France.

Although Jews in the late 1800s were a tiny minority in France—about 75,000 out of a total population of 39 million—they participated fully in the life of the nation. They could be found not only in business but also in the arts, government, education, law, medicine, and the military. Many Jews were fiercely loyal to France. When Germany annexed Alsace and Lorraine in 1871, about one-third of Alsatian Jews chose to relocate to other parts of France rather than remain in their homes and become German citizens.

There were, however, disquieting signs in the late 1800s that antisemitism was alive and well in France. In 1886, a Frenchman named Édouard Drumont wrote a book entitled
La France Juive
(Jewish France). This two-volume collection of antisemitic rumors, myths, and insinuations was an attempt to “prove” that Jews were “peculiar” and “so very different from all other beings.” In Drumont’s view, that “peculiarity” endangered France. He claimed that whenever Jews rose in power or wealth, the nation fell. His argument was based on the assumption that Jews could never be “real” citizens, because they would never act in the best interests of France.

Drumont’s book was not the first antisemitic book published in France, but it was the first to become a bestseller. During its first year in print, 100,000 copies were sold. It was reprinted 200 times over a period of 25 years.

Like Wilhelm Marr, the German journalist who coined the term
antisemitism
in 1878 (see
Chapter 10
), Drumont insisted that he was not opposed to Judaism but only to “the Semitic race.” To warn his fellow citizens of the “danger,” he founded a newspaper known as
Le Parole Libre
(
The Free Word
) in 1892. It repeatedly claimed that France was in the clutches of corrupt and unscrupulous Jews, many of whom were in the military. In issue after issue, the paper came very close to accusing Jewish officers of treason. Several of those articles were written by the Marquis de Morès, a wealthy antisemite.

Most Jews in France ignored the attacks, believing that it was best to remain silent. But Captain Armand Mayer, one of the Jews that de Morès libeled, was so outraged by the accusations that he challenged the marquis to a duel. De Morès, a veteran of many such duels, accepted the challenge and killed Mayer in their confrontation.

People throughout the country were outraged. They bombarded the newspaper with complaints about the accusations and demanded apologies for its libel of a respected officer. Backing down, Drumont and de Morès issued a statement expressing regret at the death of “such an honorable man.”

Thousands attended Mayer’s funeral. The rabbi who conducted the service spoke of the army as a “magnificent example of toleration.” He saw the outpouring of sympathy for Mayer as an expression of “the unifying force of French opinion” in support of nondiscrimination and decency.
¹
Yet just two years later, in 1894, a similar accusation would rock not only the French Jewish community but also the French army and the government it served. Public opinion was changing.

In 1894, a French worker discovered a document while cleaning the German embassy in Paris. She immediately turned it over to French military intelligence officers. The document was a
bordereau
, or memo, that listed the French military secrets that the author was willing to sell to Germany. After reading it, the officers concluded that the traitor had to be a member of the general staff of the army or to have access to its files and to those of the Ministry of War. Through a process of elimination, they narrowed down their suspects to a few officers. They then decided that the traitor was Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an officer on the general staff and the first Jew to hold such a position.