It has been our experience that those most deeply steeped in the promotion of anti-Semitism are the readiest and loudest to declaim:
“But I personally am not anti-Semitic.”
We once wrote a magazine story to this effect. We quoted Julius Streicher, Baldur von Schirach, Edmund Heines, Paul Joseph Goebbels, and an assortment of other Nazis to this effect.
Since that time we have discovered in conversation with a score or more leading lights in the American anti-Semitic profession that they too are “personally not anti-Semitic.
We are pleased to report that a few weeks ago, we uncovered a real anti-Semite. He admits of being an anti-Semite, “personally” and however else you’ll have your anti-Semitism served.
This rare species comes from the mountains of Kentucky. He happened to stay at our hotel in Lexington—that is, in the bar room (he was there on each of those frequent occasions when we sought respite from the outer heat of the city; and according to the bartender, seldom repaired to his room, apparently preferring to sleep where the beer fumes were thickest).
He was big and broad and smelled of moonshine and good hoss flesh, in which his particular kingdom happened to abound. He was clad in a buckskin jacket, vintage of Kit Carson days, and in his belt was shoved an overgrown revolver which had been used in the civil war. His hound dog that lay snoring at his master’s feet throughout the whole of the day and most of the night was about as old as the gun.
The Kentucky gentleman, when he wasn’t napping or mumbling to himself, was a right friendly sort. He told me of the renewed troubles he had suffered with revenuers since the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment; of the difficulty he had in collecting for consignments of moonshine run down into the city by Lexington dealers; of the seven year itch which had overstayed its leave in his family some sixty years; of the part his pap and grandpap played in the Civil War until its termination (in his part of the hills) in 1911; and of the shooting affairs between his clan and the Paye family, which had been brought to an end only on the demise of the last Paye, who fell under his bullets “amoanin’ and agruntin’ like a stuck pig” four years ago come September. With regard to this last he said in a somewhat whimsical manner, “It’s been doggone lonely up there since we ain’t had nobody to be neighborly with.”
It must have been after our eighth or twelfth beer that we looked the gentleman from the hills squarely in the eye (the one that was still open) and accused:
“You look anti-Semitic.”
What caused this remark on our part we are still at a loss to explain, unless the fact that his comments, so interesting and yet so free of prejudice against Jews, and the general atmosphere of non-anti-Semitism was beginning to weigh on our nerves.
He opened the other eye and asked, “What’s ‘at?”
So we repeated the accusation and he leaned back, relieved at something or other, and drawled, “Oh, Well I guess I am. In fact I guess I’m danged what you just said I was.”
Ha! We were getting back into our element. An anti-Semite from the foothills! We encouraged him to go on.
“I’m all for wipin’ ’em out. Tear ’em to pieces, ‘at’s what I always say. Be better if we didn’t have a one in the country. This war a fine bit of land afore they came in.”
“And what makes you feel that way against Jews?” we queried.
“Jews?” says he. “Who’s talking about Jews? You asked me ef I was again’ ceme’t roads, didn’t ya? Wall, I’m only tellin’ ya I’m again ’em and always will be. Ya can’t walk on the durned things ‘less ya blisters your feet or get runned down by one of those danged auteemobiles.”
When he stopped by to say “so long” the next day, he asked, “Say son. What was that there word ya used meanin’ bein’ against ceme’t roads?”
We told him it was anti-concrete.
P. M.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
