Charlis Chaplin’s parents on both sides were Jewish it would seem, according to an interview he has given here to the “Neue Freie Presse”, in which he describes his mother as a ghetto beauty, and his father as a fine jargon comedian, “Jargon” apparently meaning Jewish dialect. I have experienced the sufferings of a people treated as racially inferior, he said, and I naturally stand therefore for equal rights for all races.
Some Continental papers claim on the authority of the German-Jewish Lexicon that Charlie was born in London of immigrant Jewish parents originally named Thonstein. One Journalist in Berlin asked him straight out whether he was a Jew, but Charlie evaded the question and said that certainly he was a son of Father Abraham.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
