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VOLUME 2 No. 7 JULY 2002 fiilH journal ^^^^1 ^^^^1 Association of Jewish Refugees The contentious issue of pride '^n as a teenager I asked my father if he was once are Boris Chain (penicillin), Jonas Salk Shine. At the same time, the most powerful P^oud to be Jewish, he replied angrily: "Don't be(anti-poli o vaccine) and Carl Djerassi denunciation of McCarthyism was Arthur so bloody ridiculous!" In retrospect, I suppose(birt h pill). Miller's play The Crucible. It is no 'or him my question implied the notion that The benefits of the birth pill are, of exaggeration to say that without the latter - wuie in being Jewish was a bit like being proud course, rather debatable - but in the sphere and his novelist fellow-Jew Josef Roth - "/ being white: these were accidents of birth of sexual ethics and enlightenment, Jews American letters would hardly occupy the and any pride carried with it at least the have also played a key role. Playwrights pre-eminent position they do. Potential for discrimination against the from Schnitzler to Tony Kushner have Twentieth-century music is likewise opposite -in this case, non-Jews. shone a light into dark places - but the unthinkable without the Jewish input Thus writes Charlotte Eilenberg in the obverse also applies, pace Felix Salten's provided by the likes of Mahler, Schonberg, "itroduction to the printed text of her play porn novel Frau Mutzbacher and Richard Weil and Bernstein. (Nor, incidentally, 'he Lucky Ones (Methuen). Reading it sets Desmond's top-of-the-shelf publications. would the Salzburg and Edinburgh °"e thinking. Is pride in being Jewish Festivals have been started but for their Commendable? Or is it to be disavowed on Jewish initiators.) ^^ grounds that it resembles White feelings The visual arts - an area closed to pre- of superiority over Blacks? emancipation Jews by rabbinical edict - are ^y comparison between the two forms of now awash with Jewish names from Epstein P'^de is. in fact, so far-fetched as to be almost to Rothke, Chagall to Modigliani, and Freud Perverse. While feelings of White to Auerbach. Superiority always rested on solid But the last mentioned may be rather oundations of global jxjlitical and economic rarified pursuits. The spheres in which dominance, Jewish pride was, at least in part, Jewish innovators have touched the lives of Compensation for utter powerlessness. That millions of people most closely are industry ''Oes not mean to say that it lacked solid in and commerce. Without Jews there would oundations - but this fact has only become have been no department stores and AEG in Commonly accepted in the last few decades. Germany, no Macys in New York and no ICI, Nowadays it is taken as read that the Marks & Spencer, Lyons, Montague •''ideo-Christian heritage forms the Burtons and Tescos in the UK. ^dament of Western civilisation. However, Not that all Jewish entrepreneurs Caving to one side our over-arching benefited wider society. There were also Achievement in giving mankind monotheism Benjamin Disrael quite a few big-time fraudsters - Barmat, And the Ten Commandments, a useful way of "^^estigating whether we have reasons for A similar ambivalence obtains in the Bosel, Castiglione, Stavisky, Meyer Lansky Pride is to speculate on what the world might sphere of politics. Jews have been and Robert Maxwell - among them. ^^e looked like in our absence. advocates of liberal values and social equity However, when weighed in the balance, the bad guys pale into insignificance compared In a hypothetical Jew-free world, it is in Germany (Rathenau), France (Blum) and to the good ones. oubtful whether such universal ingredients Britain (Disraeli) - but they have also acted modem Hving as Hollywood movies, as illiberal extremists in Soviet Russia and Likewise, when Jews feel squeamish ••oadway musicals and psychoanalysis its satellites. On the credit side, one can list about associating themselves with Israel Ould have come into existence. Something human rights activist Elena Bonner as well under Sharon's leadership, it might be well '^ilar applies to the development of as Boris Pasternak, Isaak Babel and other to remember (a) whom he is confronting, •^clear physics, which, admittedly, also had dissident writers. and (b) that his predecessors included negative spin-off. Even so, the hugely The postwar United States presented a Yitzhak Rabin. bent ^^Proportionate number of Jewish Nobel distorted mirror image of this picture. If the So, all in all, it is hard to share the gut raeli ^2e winners - especially in the sciences - blacklisted Hollywood writers were largely reaction of Charlotte Eilenberg's father that '''^st have helped transform the world into a Jewish, so were Senator McCarthy's legally pride in being Jewish is an expression of ^ better place. Names that come to mind at trained henchmen Roy Cohn and David reprehensible feelings of superiority. AJR JOURNAL JULY 2002 The bitch is CONTINENTAL BRITONS still on heat Memoir of an "out-and-out anti-Nazi" Richard Grunberger Howard Spier While Britain marks the Queen's Golden 'Sebastian Haffner's Defying Hitler is a summer holiday is cut short by the Jubilee with fanfares, Germany keeps most brilliant and imaginative book - one outbreak of war, and ends with Hitler's justifiably quiet about a totally of the most important books we have assumption of power in 1933. Haffner different event which also happened to ever published'. Lord Weidenfeld told a shows how difficult it was to oppose take place half a century ago. The packed audience at the London Jewish Hitler, and just how swiftly the Nazis background to it is the indeterminate Cultural Centre. The meeting was held in gained power. In Haffner's view, the position on the German political association with the AJR's Continental Germans, unlike other European nations spectrum which the FDP - the Britons Exhibition at the Jewish Museum such as Britain and France, lacked an counterpart to Britain's Liberals - in London's Camden Tovm. outlet for self-expression, thus leading to occupies. While the Liberals are a tendency towards mass psychosis. The undeviatingly middle-of-the-road, the Lord Weidenfeld was introducing a upheaval of post-World War 1 revolution, FDP (as well as its Austrian equivalent, discussion between Oliver Pretzel, the factionalism and inflation left them the Freedom Party) has been oscillating son of Sebastian Haffner and translator alarmingly between laissez-faire and from the German of Defying Hitler, and addicted to excitement and action: Hitler extreme right-wing positions. As Martin Chalmers, a journaUst and provided this, and more. Europe knows to its cost, Jorg Haider translator of The Klemperer Diaries. took over the Freedom Party and Sebastian Haffner (pen-name of pushed it in a neo-Nazi direction over Raimund Pretzel), a prominent ten years ago. journalist, political commentator and In Germany, a similar manoeuvre historian, was a non-Jewish German who affecting the FDP unfolded in 1952. emigrated to England in 1938. Defying Werner Naumann, Goebbels's ex- Hitler is a memoir about the rise of deputy at the Propaganda Ministry, Nazism in Germany and the lives of and several likeminded plotters had ordinary German citizens between the infiltrated the Free Democrats with the wars. It was written in 1939 but the intention of turning the party into a author put it aside while pursuing a neo-Nazi Trojan Horse. British career as a joiuTialist and polemicist. Intelligence got wind of this and When he died aged 91 in 1999, his son, alerted UK High Commissioner Ivone mathematician Oliver Pretzel, Publisher Lord Weidenfeld Kirkpatrick, who ordered the plotters' discovered the manuscript. He sent it for In 1942, Haffner, aware of the details oi arrest - which kept the party on an even publication and in the summer of 2000 it the Final Solution, wrote in The Observer keel. However, today's FDP is led by became a bestseller in Gennany. Pretzel that at the end of the war the SS should be Jurgen Mollemann, best described as has translated it into English for its rounded up and shot. He later declared he Naumann's spiritual heir. Mollemann British edition. regretted writing these words, though has embarked on an extreme right- not the sentiment behind them. For his wing course, for which Martin Walser's "People knew, but they part. Pretzel is convinced that Danie' call to the Germans to shake off the looked away" burden of Auschwitz has paved the Goldhagen, the author of the highly Haffner's personal history of Hitler's rise way. He has also tapped into the controversial Hitler's WiUii^S to power explores the attributes of prevailing anti-Israel mood created by Executioners, was right: "people kneW> biased news reports (see facing page). German cultiure which provided fertile but they looked away." ground for the Nazis. According to Oliver If Ariel Sharon is Mollemann's chief Pretzel, his father was "an out-and-out *Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffoer, target, Michel Friedmann, deputy anti-Nazi from the very start." Haffner's is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson at leader of the Jewish community, memoir begins in 1914, when the family £14.99. follows closely behind. The latter's offence is that he criticised the FDP leader for accepting the Syrian-born, AJR Journal Israel-baiting former Green MP Jamal al Richard Grunberger Editor-ln-Chlef JACKMAN • Ronald Channing Executive Editor Karsli as a party member. "I am afraid", Howard Spier Editorial and Production SILVERMAN Mollemann countered speciously, "that AJR Journal, 1 Hampstead Gate, COMMERCIAL PROPERTY CONSULTANTS no one has increased the appeal of 1 a Frognal, London NW3 6AL antisemitism in Germany more than Mr Tel: 020 7431 6161 Fax: 020 7431 8454 Sharon abroad and Mr Friedmann at email: [email protected] 26 Conduit Street, London WIR 9TA home." wvwv.ajrorg.uk Telephone: 020 7409 0771 Fax: 020 7493 8017 AJR JOURNAL JULY 2002 Is media bias all in the mind? NEWTONS Leading Hampstead Solicitors The Bishop of St Albans warns that a including two small children.

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