beneficiaries were created. Chavez pointedly say that they have largely been confined to sharpened what he calls his “experience of informs us, for example, that the term His- an elite funded by outside sources and politi- Jewish rebirth,” itself a reaction to the panic did not exist before affirmative action cians enjoying seats safe from challenge. Holocaust, the rise of Israel, and the and does not exist outside America: how else Political scientist Peter Skerry, author of a “malaise” his parents imbued him with at would you lump an Argentine doctor, a forthcoming book on Hispanic politics, an early age in the face of all things Jewish. Mexican housewife, and a Cakchiquel hdi- notes that the use of illegal aliens to inflate The book he has written is therefore pretty ail into the same culture? And the leadership population figures used for redistricting is special. It isn’t first-class history and ignores the more compelling lessons to be creating “rotten boroughs” where politicians doesn’t unpack all the rooms and closets in learned from the distinctly different paths are elected by very few voters. The upshot, the mansion with a convincing or brilliant taken by, say, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, as Chavez notes, is a class of leaders “more thesis. Too much of it is in the where-1: lessons that primarily confirm the primacy of intent on vying with blacks for permanent was-when-I-heard-about-Pearl Harbor rriarriage and family and warn against look- victim status’’ than on helping Hispanics be- mode. But it does fairly honestly tell the ing to government for solutions. come the latest chapter of the American Morgenthau family’s story, a tale of glory This is not to deny that there have been dream. The David Dukes are already reaping and melancholy not without parallels in the beneficiaries of affirmative action, only to the harvest. IJ general experience of American .

he author may be aware that social and economic success in the New MOSTLY MORGENTHAUS: TWorld has been the undoing of his fellow Jews. But he never comes to grips A FAMILY HISTORY with this paradox, either in the large or within the compass of his story. “A social- archaeological dig,” he calls it. And indeed, Henry Morgenthau III besides tapping his memories and those of his relatives, he has traveled to to Ticknor & Fields/501 pages/$27.50 rummage in the archives and rub moss off gravestones, interviewed peo- ple who worked for his father at the Trea- reviewed by EDWARD NORDEN sury Department, had ’s letters to his mother deciphered, read the FBI dossiers on , and etting rich and founding a dynasty This was late for someone who aimed to sifted through his grandfather’s papers in in America is no problem. The hard join Our Crowd, that interlocking in-group the Library of Congress and his father’s bpart is keeping the dynasty going. of families like the Seligmanns and 900-volume dia& at the FDR Library. He It’s especially hard to preserve a great Jew- Lehmans, Loebs and Wertheims, Goldmans acknowledges the help of his cousin, the ish family, because in the U.S. the Jews and Sachses, whose founders had crossed late Barbara Tuchman, and one suspects chronically melt away. the ocean and made their first piles before that this gifted historian, along with his edi- Three generations, a century at most, af- the guns went off at Fort Sumter. A tors, saved the author from drowning in his ter a Jew arrives on these shores, most of climber, a bit of a scoundrel with an indif- material. his descendants have been assimilated. Of ferent business sense and a violent streak, If he lacks a thesis, he does have an ap- the Sephardi Jews who upset Peter Stuy- Lazarus failed in his bid to conjure a New proach, and not a bad one-he is forgiving, vesant by settling in New Amsterdam, World fortune and win the seal of approval even fond, yet not blind. He mentions there’s hardly a living trace. The German for his clan. However, one of his German- things no authorized work could include, Je:ws who came over between 1840 and born sons, Henry Senior, burnished the thanks to which his subjects, every so of- 1870-“Our Crowd-have kept their fam- Morgenthau name with a chain of real es- ten, jump off the page. Lazarus was “man- illy names but not the ancestral faith. Today tate killings-he sold Times Square to ic”: his brood hired Pinkerton’s to shadow the vanishing is being done by the great- Adolph Ochs-so that by the time his na- him and briefly had him committed. As for gmndchildren of the huddled eastern Euro- tive-born children married, one could be Henry Sr., though he gained the fortune pean masses immortalized by Emma paired with a Lehman, another with a that eluded Lazarus, was embraced by Our Lims, herself of Sephardi extraction. The Wertheim. The Morgenthaus therefore be- Crowd, and became ambassador to the Ot- fast mck to assimilation, to disappearance, long securely in the red-hot heart of the all- toman Empire, only his own son’s fame has always been intennarriage, and current but-extinct American-Jewish-German no- eased the disappointment and bitterness of fi,gures tell us that American Jews are bility. his old age. It is important to note-Henry choosing to many out more frequently than A scion of this family, the author is 74 I11 doesn’t-that this fortune was a mid- in and raising their kids mainly as Chris- years old and has made some exceptional dling one. It wasn’t in the Rockefeller or tians or as nothing. Exceptions like the au- choices. Not only is he married to a Jewish Kennedy or Guggenheim league; it was, thor of this book furnish the nicest proof of woman, but one who comes from Poland, a and is, just enough to enable its creator and the rule. match as rare in the good old days of Our his seed to do something more useful than Henry Morgenthau the Third’s great- Crowd as a solar eclipse. His marriage to work for a living. That something, that “re- grandfather Lazarus stepped off the boat Ruth Schachter, he says truly and with ligion,” was to be “service to democracy,” with his wife and dozen offspring in 1866. pride, was “a drastic departure.” Further- writes the author. As soon as Henry Sr. got more, he has seen to it that their children the money, he went into behind-the-scenes Edward Norden, a regular contributor, is got the basic education in Judaism that he do-gooder politics. An early check-writer writing a book on thefuture of the Jews. didn’t. These choices followed on and for presidential candidate Wilson, he de- - 60 The American Spectator February 1992 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

sired a cabinet post, but had to make do with proper treatment could be overcome, rode, let Elinor feel it. “Neither of them,” with Constantinople. There he publicized if not in this generation then probably in the author says of his parents vis-&vis the what the Turks were doing to the Armeni- the next.” First Family, “ever felt secure,” the deb ans and facilitated the transport of several The “treatment” was and is complete as- party notwithstanding. Perhaps the Mor- crates of bullion to ’s starving similation through conversion andor inter- genthaus were overly touchy, perhaps the Jews. But his diplomatic career was a fail- marriage. Why has it been only in the last Roosevelts were political in all their deal- ure, for which he blamed the ingrate, cun- thirty or forty years that Our Crowd, and af- ings-the author broaches both possibili- ning, pushy Zionists. ter it the great-grandchildren of the Lower ties. Yet Henry Jr. had a lock on the Trea- Like the rest of Our Crowd, Henry Sr. East Siders, have gone in for these cures, sury job. Not only was he loyal-he got deplored Jewish nationalism, apprehending especially intermarriage, in such a big way? done what his boss wanted done, rewrote it, in his grandson’s words, as a “renuncia- Is it because America until the last genera- the tax laws to soak their fellow rich, and tion of newly won rights and acceptance” tion wasn’t all that accepting? Or is it be- ran Lend-Lease devotedly when the British in America. This did not stop him from be- cause the older members of Our Crowd, were fighting the Germans alone. After ing favorably impressed by the muscular, now buried in Reform cemeteries, uneasy as Pearl Harbor he, more than anyone else, tanned Jews he met in Zion, and aiding they were about their Jewishness, harbored was responsible for gearing the economy them with that gold shipment. Non-Zionist too much snobbery, decorousness, pride, or up to make total war. pillars of Our Crowd like Jacob Schiff and social anxiety to try to break all the way On balance, Henry Jr. served his country Felix Warburg would find ways to help out out? The author doesn’t pose, much less try beautifully. He also went out of his way to without signing on. Maybe Henry Sr. could to answer, these questions. He does make it try to help his fellow Jews. It was as if he have been with them if his attempt on Wil- plain with some charming insider stories were heeding Wilson’s advice to his father son’s behalf to sound out the Turks on a and memories that his childhood was spent before Henry Sr. departed for Constantino- separate peace in 1917 hadn’t bombed as it almost entirely with the other boys and girls ple: “Remember that anything you can do did. “From the time he joined the mission, of Our Crowd in the plush ghetto of the Up to improve the lot of your co-religionists is [Felix] Frankfurter served as a Zionist mole per West Side, from which excursions were an act that will reflect credit upon Ameri- bent on informing, leaking, and eventually mounted to the Dutchess County farm, ca.” The circumstances were now different. blowing the mission out of the water,” Deerfield Academy, and, when FDR moved If the Turks had ill-used a handful of Jews, Henry I11 writes. Yet he understands that into it, the White House. the Germans were exterminating millions. his grandfather was out of his depth and Of course, FDR regretted what the enemy why these feelers were mischievous-the or where Henry Sr. had failed, Henry was doing, but preferred to concentrate on assumption on which the Balfour Declara- Jr. made good. To be sure, he was winning the war-besides, he was idolized tion was being cooked was that the Ot- Fpushed by his father and assisted by by American Jews and didn’t have to worry toman Empire was doomed. Henry Sr., his wife, the author’s mother Elinor, who about their votes. Unlike Frankfurter and having perhaps exceeded his instructions, possibly was Eleanor Roosevelt’s best Bernard Baruch, who feared its being was recalled and scapegoated by Wilson. friend. Henry Sr. faintly resembled Joseph known as the Jew Deal, Morgenthau was From that point, he was “something of a Kennedy. “My grandfather was determined shocked enough, and had a good enough loose cannon,” putting Zionism down as that in a Roosevelt administration his son character, to demand specific action, even “the most stupendous fallacy in Jewish his- would have the cabinet post of which he at a cost to his standing with President Roo- tory.” himself felt deprived by Wilson.” So the sevelt. What he knew of Jewish history wasn’t old man sent his son to Exeter, where he Granted, he didn’t ask the commander- much, and this was typical. Already in was “miserable,” set him up as a gentleman in-chief to order the bombing of Ausch- Mannheim, Lazarus had uncovered his farmer in Dutchess County, where he lost witz. This idea is not mentioned by the au- head, shaved his beard, and joined the Re- money growing apples and, was Governor thor, but it was an operation the U.S. was form temple, a mock church. His son and Roosevelt’s neighbor, and shelled out for capable of, and one for which some Jews grandson in Manhattan would go him one the latter’s presidential campaign. With and non-Jews pleaded in vain. To press better by flirting with Ethical Culture, a such a father and FDR as a boss, no wonder FDR on this would no doubt have been too steppingstone to Unitarianism. True, the Henry Jr. was periodically knocked out by much even for the shaken Morgenthau, Morgenthaus didn’t convert-this book migraines. Yet according to their son, the who owed his career to him. Henry Jr. would not exist if they had. But so far had marriage of Henry Jr. and Elinor Fatman, could be courageous or shy, he could be su- they come by 1917, when the Balfour Dec- of Lehman stock, was a “true love match.” perb or dim, as, for example, when he laration was publicized and the author She bucked him up and gave War Bond hadn’t a clue that Harry Dexter White, one born, that he wasn’t even circumcised. “By speeches for him when the Secretary of the of his Jewish lieutenants at Treasury, was the time I came into the world,” he writes, Treasury was out with a headache. Elinor probably working for Stalin. What he did “all significant vestiges of ethnicity in my also used her best connection for her chil- press for and eventually got was more sym- family had been thoroughly camouflaged.” dren’s benefit-on the day after Christmas, bolic, though it did save a few lives. Incited It was more than a matter of Our Crowd’s 1940, the White House was the scene of by his Christian lieutenants-Randolph bacon, Christmas trees, and Easter tiunnies. her daughter Joan’s coming-out party, an Paul, John Pehle, and Josiah E. DuBois- Their lifestyle was modeled on that of the event even the author is still thrilled by. he convinced the President to establish the richer WASPs, not, God forbid, those con- His father’s pull and money catapulted War Refugee Board (WRB). The paper suming outrageously at Newport, yet still Henry Jr. into FDR’s field of vision. He written by DuBois, entitled “Report to the complete with jodhpurs and country seats. was always utterly loyal, yes, and FDR val- Secretary on the Acquiescence of the Gov- Most of these Jews knew only enough ued that, although cruelly he never allowed ernment to the Murder of the Jews,” was about being Jewish to suffer privately from his friend to feel totally confident about his toned down by Henry to “Personal Report it. As the author says, “It was a kind of position, either in government or in his af- to the President” before being delivered to birth defect that could not be eradicated but fections. Nor did Eleanor, with whom she the Oval Office. The resulting WRB, fund-

The American Spectator February 1992 61 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

ed mostly from private donations, forced wise, who married out, did anything wrong. boleths and Jewish survival go together in the anti-Semites in the State Department to “Of Grandpa Morgenthau’s twelve grand- the Diaspora. If Jews are an endangered issue visas and other travel documents to children . . . about half had wedded Chris- species in America, it’s because of inter- what by 1944 the author says was a “heart- tians.” The author’s brother, Robert, fa- marriage. And if there’s anything classical- rendingly disappointing number” of people mous district attorney of Manhattan and ly illiberal, it’s resistance to intermarriage. on the run. scourge of BCCI, has intermarried twice. Brave as his long march has been, the au- The National Holocaust Memorial The DA, it is pointed out, nevertheless sits thor doesn’t seem to understand, or want to opens on the Mall this year. Will visitors be on the board of Temple Emanu-el and is face, the connection between liberalism-in- apprised of this history? They should be. It friends with Ariel Sharon. Like his brother, action and what he calls the “dissolution” helps explain many things, including why the author is a Democrat and a liberal, as of American Jewry. the U.S. had to step in before Saddam de- most Americans of Jewish background still However, he has three kids: Sarah, stroyed the Kurds. It also helps explain the are. The reader is at a loss to say whether Kramer, and Henry IV. Maybe when one of political culture of American Jews in the Henry I11 realizes how typical his exalted them brings the history of the dynasty up to last generation-what the fathers 2nd family is, and how badly some liberal shib- date, he or she will check out that link. 0 grandfathers were afraid or ashamed or too slow to do, what they lacked the chutzpah for, a sufficient number of their children, even when intermarried, have not been THE LAST LEOPARD: afraid, indeed have felt impelled, to say and write and do for Israel and the Soviet Jews. A LIFE OF GIUSEPPE TOMASI DI LAMPEDUSA Exceptionally for an American Jew of his age and class, Henry Morgenthau 111 has no David Gilmour reason to be ashamed of his father’s role. Indeed he is proud of it. As he is of the guts it required to promote his unwise plan to Pantheon Books1223 pages/$22 de-industrialize Germany after the war, and the fundraising he organized for Israel after Hury Truman let him go and he agreed to reviewed by WCHARD LAMB head the United Jewish Appeal.

on’t have anything to do with the Jews. They’ll stab you in “Dthe back,” Henry Sr. cau- n Italy, whenever a southern aristocrat nately close to his mother, and remained so timed his son. Sure enough, Henry Jr. got of a certain era dies, the obituaries all his life. He spent in the ar- xed up in Jewish wars, and later with- Imourn the loss of “the last leopard.” tillery, was wounded and captured at Tren- drew. But his few years in cahoots with ~e The allusion is to The Leopard, by tino, and in the confusion of the war’s end Zionists were important to Israel at its Giuseppe di Lampedusa. David Gilmour’s escaped from his Austrian captors. After a birth, giving him perhaps his least compli- The Last Leopard is Lampedusa’s story. It first, unsuccessful, attempt to escape, he cated, most autonomous feeling of accom- is a slim volume about an enigmatic man was obliged to pay his train fare back to the plishment and marking a path for his own who wrote, towards the end of his unevent- prisoner-of-war camp as punishment. son, the author. “I cannot recall ever having ful life, a luminous book. Known at the time by the courtesy title of a :serious discussion with my father about With some careful cutting and pasting, Duke of Palma, Giuseppe attributed his in- Jewish matters,” says Henry 111, yet it may one could construct an amusing biography of dulgent treatment to the ducal coronet em- have been his father’s challenge to FDR Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, one broidered on his uniform. and defiance of Henry Sr., both times on full of romance and absurdity. He was born After the war he had a nervous break- the topic of the Jews, that gave Henry 111 a in Palermo in 1896, when “one of the least down, possibly as a result of his war better angle on that “birth defect.” Surely distinguished aristocracies in Europe”-the wound, which may have left him impotent. the experience of fighting in Patton’s 3rd Sicilian-was enjoying its golden age. Per- When Mussolini came to power, Giuseppe Army also helped. After all, at Princeton sonages from Puccini to the Kaiser were en- at first looked upon Fascism as an effective before the war, he-the son of a cabinet of- tertained in Palermo’s casus, as chic Paler- hedge against the Bolsheviks, then soured ficer-had been ignored by the clubs, an mitans referred to their palazzos, and a on it, finding its bluster “boring and rather “emasculating experience.” His father had sailor-suited Giuseppe met Napoleon 111’s ridiculous.” In 1926 he visited his uncle, migraines, and the author when young had widow, who reportedly exclaimed “Que1joli who was Italian ambassador to the Court of stomach aches. These were the symptoms petit!” St. James’s. Gauche by nature and by no not merely of a poor little rich kid, but a The Lampedusas were an ancient fami- means fluent in English, he was something certain type of Jewish rich kid. “I moved ly, possibly descended from Tiberius, but a of a social success in London, which through stages of self-hatred, anger, as- nineteenth-century patriarch had died intes- Gilmour attributes to his being mistaken for sertiveness, and, eventually, acceptance tate, and a legal imbroglio worthy of Bleak the Duke of “Parma” by ambitious hostess- leading to a positive re-identification,” House ensued. Yet despite his family’s es. Now an Italian province, Parma was an Henry III writes. princely poverty Giuseppe insisted that his ancient duchy, ruled by the Farnese and lat- His marriage, he implies, was the big- was an idyllic childhood. He was inordi- er the Bourbons. It is famous for violets gest forward step he took. Which is not to and cheese. Palma is a dusty village in Sici- say that he so much as hints that those of Richard Lamb is a writer living in New ly. his friends and relatives who chose other- York City. Giuseppe, duke of a dusty village, be-

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