• Friday, :January 29;- •1943
THE JEWISH NEWS
Second article more attractive than the first.
At least it left him the holy books, though
perhaps in more potent and immediately
effective doses than he had been accustomed
to imbibing. But when the next week his
eyes fell upon "The Case Against the Jew"
by Milton Mayer, he began to feel a little
sick. After the first sentence : "The Jews of
America are afraid their number is up—if
not today, then tomorrow or the next," Mr.
Goldstein, thcugh generally a peaceable
man, experienced somewhat less than affec-
tion for the author. And though Mr. Mayer
went on to indicate that Jews would be
saved if they mended their ways, and re-
turned "to the radical righteousness of
Isaiah," Mr. Goldstein was intensely skep-
tical of the constructive nature of Mr.
Mayer's contribution to the Jewish question.
Semitic apologies to which Jews are now
being subjected. The ordinary Jew looks
aghast at the costumes with which he is
being furnished. On the one hand, he sees
the Satanic vestments, complete with horns
and cloven hoof, of Hitler demonology,
dragged out of some primordial abyss of
madness and bestiality. On the other, he
The Roles of Hitler and
for Republican France. He is now in New York
NEXT WEEK'S FEATURE:-
The Soldiers France Forgot
By Z. SZAJKOWSKI
The author of this important article fought
Goldstein Contrasted
Y this time, all Mr. Goldstein's friends
were debating these various points of
view with intense agitation, not be-
, cause of the intrinsic merits of the
attributes indicated but because they
had been expressed in a large Amer-
ican magazine. (Similar articles in the
Anglo-Jewish press would not cause
the slightest rip p 1 e.) PM period-
ically carried huge headlines on relevant
themes, and by June Mr. Goldstein was
already psychologically attuned to reading
"Jews, Anti-Semites and Tyrants" by Stanley
High in Harper's. Ordinarily Mr. Goldstein
did not read Harper's; he thought it a bit
high-brow, but the title attracted him as he
scanned the current magazines at a news-
stand. Mr. High's opinions, especially since
they were those of a Methodist not a Jew,
gave the Goldstein entourage quite a lift.
It was inspiring, if a little disconcerting, to
read : "Anti-Semitism is a recurring form of
reaction against the struggle of Western man
for religious, political, and economic emanci-
pation. The Jew has been hated because the
sources of that struggle are in large part
Jewish." Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein looked upon
each other with a touch of mutual awe
when they discovered "The heaviest re-
sponsibility that the Jew has to bear is his
gift to the world of the Old and New Testa-
ments, the Prophets and Jesus. Encompassed
in those gifts are the form and substance,
the life and breath of the struggle for free
dom which the powers of the world have
most desperately fought to suppress." This
made the role of both Hitler and Goldstein
crystal clear. Thus reinforced, Mr. Goldstein
felt that even the loudest chorus of "too
many Jews are air-raid wardens" would be
unable to keep him from the completion of
his appointed rounds.
But along came the Reader's Digest (Sep-
tember, 1942) with an article entitled "The
Facts About Jews in Washington" by W. M.
Kiplinger. Again there were headlines in
PM, plus an article by Pearl Buck. Mr. Kip-
linger made plain that Jews in government
employ were hard workers who had won
their jobs by passing civil service examina-
tions. He also stated that young Jews were
attracted to Washington because, through
the automatic functioning of the civil service
rules, they escaped the discrimination they
met in private employment. Yet Mr. Kip-
linger's conclusion was nevertheless, that
since Jews were only 4 per cent of the popu-
lation, they should not have more than 4 per
cent of the positions. If not for Pearl Buck's
beautiful rejoinder, Mr. Goldstein would
have had a bad time of it. After all, man
cannot live by prophecy alone, and if Jews
were to be kept out of considerable sectors
of private employment by discrimination,
and out of civil service by such a voluntary
numerus clausus, Mr. Goldstein did not see
how the home fires would be kept burning.
The Saianic Vestments of
Hitler Demonology
HE psychological difficulties of Jacob
Goldstein are 'by no means unique.
They are shared by many American
Jews who till the past decade had had
no special Jewish self-consciousness
and no acute awareness of Jewish
problems as such. But no shield, either
of willful ignorance or of apathy, can
be stout enough to withstand the
batter ings of anti-:Semitic attack or pro-
,
where he holds a research fellowship in modern
Jewish history from the Yiddish Scientific Insti-
tute. He endangered his own chances of escape
from France by rescuing archival materials from
the Yivo headquarters in Paris, which he man-
aged to bring with him to America. The Jewish
News will publish his article by special arrange-
ment with the Contemporary Jewish Record,
published by the American Jewish Committee.
beholds the Messianic robes and martyr's
halo neatly laid out in readiness for a final
holocaust. And he is oppressed by the melo-
dramatic character of the roles to which he
is assigned. He is bewildered at finding
himself alternately cast as Ormazd or
Ahriman, as the cardinal principle of good
or of evil. He would like a part more in
accordance with his real talents—the part of
a simple human being, judged according to
his particular merits or demerits.
It is just this part which is becoming
increasingly hard to get, even in the United
States. Too many Jews feel themselves
under psychological compulsions which cur-
tail their freedom of action and freedom of
expression. Before the war, many Jews de-
liberately refrained from denouncing the
international menace of Nazism as vigor-
ously as they were inclined, because they
were afraid of the charge of war-mongering.
The charge was raised anyhow, because
anti-Semitic propaganda, being essentially
irrational in character, is never dissuaded
from launching an accusation because it is
false. The fact remains, however, that the
leading American interventionists counted
few Jews in their midst. It was considered
an asset for the interventionist camp that its
most articulate figures, from D o r o t h y
Thompson to President Roosevelt, were over-
whelmingly non-Jews. Yet the circumstance
that the Jews had front seats at the Nazi
carnival of death should not have made
their testimony less telling. It was as though
a man whose home and family had just been
destroyed by incendiaries bent on starting a
general conflagration should hesitate to give
the alarm or point to the criminals for fear
of being accused of arson.
The Milder Manifestations
of Anti-Semitic Disease
Since America's entry into the war, Jews
are again aware of malicious whispering
campaigns to the effect that Jews are getting
special consideration from draft boards, are
getting desk jobs, etc. All the hoary thous-
and times disproven libels about Jewish
participation in the war effort, part of the
stock in trade of anti-Semitic propa-
Page Nine
ganda, are being hauled out anew. Conse-
quently there are Jews who catch themselves
noting the Jewish names in casualty lists
with the dismal hope that the neighbors will
not fail to observe the number of Cohens and
Levys cited. Part of the pathos of this hope
is that no matter how impressive the figures
are, or how heroic the exploits recounted,
not a single anti-Semitic jibe will thereby be
stopped. Hitler found it very simple to efface
all Jewish names on monuments to the war
dead in Germany, and the fact that the
proportion of Jewish soldiers in the German
army was greater than their proportion in
the population in no way affected the success
of his campaign. The same holds good for
milder manifestations of the disease of anti-
Semitism.
There is another fear from which some
Jews suffer. We are living in a period which
is witnessing the most savage persecution of
a minority in the history of mankind. The
systematic massacres of Jews staged by the
Nazis make St. Bartholomew's Night child's
play in comparison. But while some Amer-
ican Jews are outraged by the comparative
indifference with which civilized mankind is
viewing the physical annihilation of a people,
others feel that no undue fuss should be
made about the martydom of the Jews. The
same people who shared in the general out-
burst of indignation at Lidice—an outburst
which found dramatic and moving expres-
sion—take for granted the silence which
shrouds the prolonged Lidice of European
Jewry. In this silence is a tacit admission
that Jews are different, that their sufferings
are different, and that their compassion and
fury which should be the rational reaction
to these sufferings, unparalleled anywhere in
scope and intensity, would somehow be
unseemly.
The Psychosis That Threatens
Democracy's Structure
ET the impulses to express indignation,
to suffer, to arouse the sympathy of
one's fellow_a, should not be subject to
a kind of self-imposed censorship for
fear of arousing antagonism. Such a
censorship, whether in the emotional,
political, or economic spheres, is a sur-
render of fundamental human rights.
Suggestions that there be a voluntary
numerus clausus for Jews in government
employ are an indication of an alarming
trend, all the more so because they are
frequently put forward in good faith. Jacob
Goldstein, the average Jewish citizen of the
United States, has the right to expect that
his efforts in any field will be judged only by
his competence and his honesty. Any other
interpretation of his rights is, on the face of
it, discriminatory. Particularly when the
country is engaged in a life and death strug.
gle, it can ill afford to be wasteful of the
ability or industry of its citizens in order to
cater to prejudices which are the antithesis
of our professed ideals.
!
The open rabble-rousing and hate-monger-
ing of obvious fascist elements is a danger
which cannot be minimized, and which is
being faced by everyone intelligently con-
cerned with the future of our country. But
there is a more insidious danger, not so
readily recognized, but equally potent. That
is the creation of a psychological atmosphere
in which the individual is divested of his
particular attributes, be they good or evil,
and made into an impersonal category
answerable to some fiction in the popular
mind. That is the first step in the dehumani-
zation of Jacob Goldstein and the substitu-
tion of a tribal symbol. It is also the
beginning of a psychosis, alien to the spirit
of America, whose development if unchecked
would threaten the organic structure of our
democracy.
EDITOR'S NOTE—The Jewish News is pleased to present this splendid study of an
American • Jew's reactions to anti-Semitism in collaboration with Miss Marie Syrkin
and Common Ground, in whose Winter 1943 Issue it originally appeared. Common
Ground is published by Common Council for American Unity, whose Board of Direc-
tors includes the name of Fred M. Butzel of Detroit. Miss Margaret Anderson is editor
of "Common Ground." Miss Syrkin, the author of this article, is a noted essayist and
poet. She is the associate • editor of the Jewish Frontier. Her father, the late Dr. Na-
hum Syrkin,:, was one of:the outstanding labor leaders and was one of the founders of
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thc:Poale •ZiO*;
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