The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

Ever since I can remember I have had a special and peculiar interest in the history and the progress of the Jewish race. The first book that I knew, the Bible, was a history of the Jews, and to my childish mind the most fascinating portion of that book was the story of the manner in which Moses led the children of Israel out of the house of bondage, through the wilderness, into the promised land. I first heard that story from the lips of my mother, when both she and I were slaves on a plantation in Virginia. I have heard it repeated and referred to many times since. In fact, I am certain that there is hardly a day or a week goes by that I do not meet among my people some reference to this same Bible story.

The Negro slaves were always looking forward to the time when a Moses should arise from somewhere who would lead them, as he led the ancient Hebrews, out of the house of bondage. And after freedom, the masses of the Negro people have still continued to look to some great leader, some man inspired of God, who would lead them out of their difficulties into the promised land, which, somehow, they never seem able to reach.

As I learned in slavery to compare the condition of the Negro with that of the Jews in bondage in Egypt, so I have frequently, since freedom, been compelled to compare the prejudice, even persecution, which the Jewish people have to face and overcome in different parts of the world with the disadvantages of the Negro in the United States and elsewhere.

I had seen a good deal of the lower classes of the Jews in New York City before going to Europe, and when I visited Whitechapel, London, I had an opportunity to learn something of the condition of the Polish and Russian Jews who, driven from their native land, have found refuge in England. It was not until I reached Cracow, in Austrian Poland, or Galicia, however, that I really began to understand what life in the Ghetto, of which I had heard so much, was really like. It was not until then that I began to comprehend what the wear and tear of centuries of persecution, poverty, and suffering had meant in the life of the Jews.

One of the first things I observed in regard to the Jews abroad was the very different forms which racial prejudice takes in the different countries that I visited. For example, in East London, which has long been the refuge for the poor and oppressed of other countries, the Jew is tolerated, although he is not liked. It is not clear just what is the source of the English prejudice. Complaint is sometimes made that the Jewish immigrant has driven out the native Briton from certain parts of East London, but it is admitted at the same time that in such cases it is because the Jew has proven a better tenant. He does not drink, he is law-abiding, and he pays his rent regularly. It seems to be true in London, also, as it is in New York, that as soon as the Jewish immigrant has made a little success he does not remain in the same quarter of the city. He soon moves out and his place is taken by some new and half-starved fugitive from Russia or Roumania, so that there is a constant stream of "greeners," as they are called, coming in, and another, perhaps somewhat smaller, stream of those who have been successful moving out. In spite of this fact, it is generally admitted that general conditions have improved under the influence of the Jews. English prejudice where it exists seems to be due, therefore, partly to economic causes and partly to the general distrust of the alien that seems to be gaining in England with the influx of immigration from southern Europe. In Denmark, on the contrary, where the Jews seem to be very largely represented among the educated and well-to-do classes, I discovered a great deal of prejudice against the Germans but almost none against the Jews. In fact, one of the most distinguished men in Denmark, outside of the King, a man who has been a leader in the intellectual life of that country during the past thirty years, Prof. Georg Brandes, is a Jew.

In Germany I learned that, while the Jews are prominent not only in business but in the professions, it was still difficult for them to rise in the army or to advance to the position of professor in the universities, unless they have first been baptized.

In speaking about this matter to a German whom I met at one of the hotels in Vienna, I called to mind the name of a distinguished professor whose name I had heard as an instance of a Jew gaining a high position in a German university.

"Oh, well," he replied, "he has been baptized."

That recalls to my mind a conundrum which an acquaintance proposed while we were discussing some of the peculiarities of race prejudice in Europe.

"When is a Jew not a Jew?" he asked. The answer is of course, "When he is a Christian." In other words, prejudice in Germany seems to be directed only against the Jew who clings to his religion.