[3] Statement by Dr. M. Zitron, Dos Yiddishe Volk, of Warsaw, July 11, 1919.
VII[ToC]
THE VICIOUS ROLE OF ANTI-SEMITISM
Precisely such propaganda as that which the Dearborn Independent has been carrying on is responsible for many of the blackest and most shameful pages in history. Wherever and whenever there has been an organized propaganda of anti-Semitism it has invariably been closely intertwined with every other contemporary reactionary oppressive and contemptible force. To those who know the history of anti-Semitism in Russia, in Poland, and in Rumania, even in quite recent years, this statement will seem so trite as not to require any demonstration. This close association with other forms of reaction and brutal oppression is not peculiar to anti-Semitism, but is a common characteristic of every form of race prejudice and hatred. Among the Turks organized prejudice and hatred of Armenians has invariably been found to be closely associated with all the other evil forces in the Turkish Empire. In our own country, discrimination against and injustice to the negro goes hand in hand with almost every other form of reaction and oppression.
It is quite useless to pretend that such articles as those published in the Dearborn Independent and the London Morning Post are not really anti-Semitic propaganda, but merely a legitimate discussion of a great and serious problem. Such specious pleading will not deceive any intelligent, honest person. The only possible object of the articles is to convince the people who read them that civilized society is threatened by a great world-wide secret conspiracy of the Jews; that this virile and highly intelligent people, scattered throughout the civilized world, and numbering, it is estimated, about sixteen millions, is secretly organized and led by an "invisible government" composed of some of the ablest and keenest minds in the world, to the end of bringing all the governments of the earth, together with all industry and commerce, under the absolute rule and dominion of a dynasty to be set up by an aristocratic Jewish Sanhedrin.
Even if we ignore, for the purpose of this discussion, the fact that to sustain this charge a structure of cruel falsehood has been erected with great cunning, it is surely plain enough that the effect of such a charge upon the minds of such non-Jews as believe it can only be the development of a spirit of antagonism toward Jews, as Jews. In so far as the Dearborn Independent succeeds in its efforts, it must inevitably make our Gentile population regard their Jewish neighbors with fear and suspicion. And from such fear and suspicion emanate intolerance and hatred and their brutal progeny. There is no essential difference between the articles which have been appearing in Mr. Ford's paper, either in spirit or in text, and those which, in a past so recent that its horror haunts the memory of men and women of our generation, let loose upon tens of thousands of helpless and inoffensive people the most bestial and fiendish cruelty and hatred ever attained by beings called human.
I can quite well remember the intense horror with which the Christian world read of the wave of pogroms against the Jews which swept over Russia in 1891, following the inhuman enforcement of the "May Laws." Jewish women in travail, forced to flee for their lives, hid in cemeteries, and in those "cities of the dead" brought forth their babes. Jewish fathers took their daughters to brothels for safe hiding. Jewish women and girls were raped. Jewish homes were looted, and whole villages inhabited by Jews were burned down. Even women and children were brutally murdered, simply because they were Jews and because a newspaper propaganda in all respects like that now being carried on in this country and in England had made the Jewish people the object of suspicion and fear and, therefore, of hatred. It was then that a Russian statesman declared that the "Jewish question" would be solved only when one third of the Jews had perished, another third emigrated, and the remaining third been converted to the orthodox Church!