The charge that Madison Grant, president of the New York Zoological Society and author of “The Passing of the Great Race,” has used his position to further anti-Semitism, is made by Annie Nathan Meyer, author and one of the founders of Barnard College, in a letter published in the May issue of Opinion.
Miss Meyer writes in part as follows:
“It will doubtless surprise a number of my compatriots to learn that the leader of the German Reich might have lifted the whole of his racial creed from the pages of a book written by an American who is president of the New York Zoological Society. All of the Fuehrer’s pet obsessions are to be found in ‘The Passing of the Great Race’ by Madison Grant who, besides being the president of the Zoological Society, which maintains the Zoological Garden and the Aquarium, is a member of the board of trustees of the Museum of Natural History….
“Here are to be found Hitler’s fantastic claims of superiority for the Nordic race; his insane hatred of the Jews, of the Italians, of all people who are not blonde and blue-eyed; his contempt for all who are inclined towards peace rather than war; his willingness to ascribe every crime to those humans who happen to be brunette and short of stature; his disdain for a democratic government; his distaste for the softness and sentimentality of Christian ethics; his ambition to make over the Christian religion along heroic lines, divorced from what Grant calls its ‘slave-minded origins’; his reliance on sterilization as a cure-all; and, finally, his denial that Jesus could have been a Jew!
“It is somewhat astonishing that in the city of New York, with its thousands of Jews, of Italians, of Negroes, that no citizen has before this arisen to question how it is that a man of such extreme intolerance could have remained for many years at the head of a society which is so immensely indebted to the taxpayers of the city.
“The Zoological Society is actually installed upon land freely given to it by the city and receives from the Board of Estimate and Apportionment annual grants of several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Furthermore, ex-officio members of the society are the head of the Park Department, a Jew who commands the affectionate respect of the entire population; the president of the Borough of the Bronx, and our courageous and admirable Mayor who—to add a positively Gilbertian flavor to the whole affair — is descended from the two people on whom Mr. Grant so lavishly pours his hatred and contempt.”
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