Arts & Enterta

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Protocols from page 63

by Stephen Son

EMBER 13-JAN

Directed by Harold

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Origins
Though the origins of the Protocols
remain uncertain, scholars believe
much of the work was plagiarized
from an 1864 pamphlet written by
French satirist Maurice Joly lam-
pooning Napoleon III's political
ambitions, and had nothing to do
with the Jews.
Herthann Goedsche, a German
spy, swiped Joly's pamphlet and
excerpts from a novel by Alexandre
Dumas in his book Biarritz, written
under a pseudonym.
In a chapter entitled "The Jewish
Cemetery in Prague and the Council
of Representatives of the Twelve
Tribes of Israel," Goedsche depicted
a secret rabbinical council that met
in the cemetery at midnight every
100 years to plan the agenda for the
Jewish conspiracy.
The book was translated into
Russian in 1872. In 1891, the czarist
secret police were using it to incite
popular ire against Russia's Jewish
population and divert public atten-
tion from the country's political
woes.
The work appeared in its final
form and under -the title The
Protocols of the Learned Elders of
Zion in 1897, apparently compiled
by Mathieu Golovinski, an associate
of Czar Nicholas II.
•The Protocols first reached
American shores in 1917, when
Russian emigre Boris Brazil trans-
lated them into English.
In 1920, industrialist Henry Ford
sponsored the printing of 500,000
copies of the work and included

excerpts of the Protocols in his
weekly Dearborn Independent
through 1927. The Holocaust
Museum exhibit includes a copy of
Ford's own diatribe, "The
International Jew."
British diplomat Lucien Wolf —
who in 1917 had strongly supported
the issuance of the Balfour
Declaration, the document pledging
British support for a Jewish home-
land in the land of Israel
traced
the Protocols back to Goedsche's
writings, and published his findings
in London in 1921.
Later that year, the Times of
London ran a series of articles prov-
ing that the work was a forgery, and
American Herman Bernstein
authored a book documenting its
history.
By 1924, however, the Protocols
had been translated into German
and found their way to Hitler's
.prison cell. Taken by the book, Hitler
referred to it in Mein Kampf
"To what an extent the whole exis-
tence of this people is based on a
continuous lie is shown incompara-
bly by the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, so infinitely hated by the Jews,"
he wrote. "Once this book has
become the common property of a
people the Jewish menace may be
considered as broken."
The Holocaust Museum collection
contains a copy of the first edition of
the Protocols published in Nazi
Germany in 1933.
The collection is on display
through the end of the year. ❑

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64

December 15 2005

J

A U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit about the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion explores the history and impact of this forgery.

