The Jewish Daily Bulletin is privileged to run the following statement from Paris, by courtesy of Harper & Brothers, publishers of Mr. Lewisohn’s books, the latest of which, “This People,” is a book of stories about Jewish types.
When individuals, men and women, are pursued by misfortune or suffer what seems gross injustice, they look for causes without and not within; they try to “pass the buck” to unhappy circumstances or fancied enemy.
This process is as old as the world; it is used by groups of men as well as by individuals. When people suffer, reason fails, self-examination is halted; they look for a scapegoat on whom to unload their sins as literally as savage tribes that drive an actual goat out of their village.
For years the German National Socialists have built up a bloody myth by means of which to “pass the buck” to others and to the world. These others are the “Marxists” and the Jews. Why the Jews? Because the Jews, despite themselves, persist and are powerless; because they have through dark ages become to the ignorant and unhappy a symbol of ill omen. Hence it is true that sharp anti-Semitism is always the symptom of a society’s slipping back into barbarism. The Jews are the barometer of civilization.
The Hitlerian persecution could have been foreseen. For ten years its blood-thirsty cries have polluted the air of Germany. It was foreseen. No one lifted a hand to fore-stall or prevent. No Jewish colleges were established, no Jewish university was founded. No great Jew, except Einstein alone, said: I am a Jew; as such you must take me or leave me. The lash was raised and the Jews rushed under it. That is their error.
I am deeply touched by the protestations of America, of both the Gentiles and the Jews of my country. It may mitigate the evil; it cannot cure. What happened in Hungary yesterday, what happens in Germany today, what is always happening more or less in Poland or Roumania, may happen elsewhere tomorrow.
There is no hope and no help in anything less than the negation of the diaspora in its present form. Jews must with all their hearts and strength cooperate as Jews in the civilization amid which they dwell and no more and never again inter-penetrate those civilizations as imitation Gentiles. All imitation, however nobly motivated, has an element of baseness. It is always found out. If we renounce this error and are still crucified anywhere, then and then only will the moral indignation of mankind burn clear enough to destroy those who crucify us.
The Jewish people can gain the universal suffrages of civilized men only by that act of auto-emancipation which prevents it forevermore from imitating the degrading antics of the salesman of the comic papers who, thrown out of the front door, slinks to the servants’ entry.
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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.
