REFLECTIONS ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
4b6
skyists were Jewish intellectuals. In the East during the period when
Malcolm Cowley was writing literary criticism for the Stalinists in the
pages of
The New Republic,
Communist Party fellow-travelers made
no secret of their belief that the Trotskyists were a bunch of "neurotic
New York Jews." Just about two years ago, Pierre HerVe wrote in
l'Humanite:
"It is not by accident that three quarters of the Trot–
skyist leaders are Jews."
I once asked a leading Communist who had broken with the
Stalinists to explain as objectively as he could the source of this anti–
semitism. He groped haltingly for an explanation. "It's a matter of
superficial cultural differences." He then exclaimed in a burst of
honest confession: "I must admit that even I become irritated when
I see people in the subway pull Jewish newspapers from their pockets.
I feel that
if
they are living here they really ought to become part of
the culture." "Do you feel the same way," I asked him, "when people
draw Greek, Russian, German or Italian newspapers from their
pockets?" "Why, no," he replied wonderingly. "That's odd," he
added, "I never thought about that before." He is still mystified.
Sartre is aware, however, that the causes of antisemitism are not
to be found in the behavior of the Jews. That is why the theme of his
book is more topical today than it was when it originally appeared.
For since then, the actions and thought-ways, to some extent even the
psychology, of many Jewish groups seem to be changing without any
noticeable decrease in antisemitism.
Any careful observer of Jewish affairs is conscious of these trans–
formations among the Jews since the end of the war. To a large extent
they are attributable to the profound shock which followed the
dis–
covery that almost six million fellow Jews had been slaughtered by
Hitler. That they died was one blow; how they died another; the
way the rest of the world reacted to the news a third.
It
is safe
to
say that the Jews as a whole will never be the same again.
As
a
historical event, the extermination of the greater part of European
Jewry will take its place with the Exodus and the destruction of the
Temple. Even
if
the brotherhood of man had followed hard upon
the fall of Hitler, it would have taken a long time for the wounds to
heal.
As
it is, these wounds are torn open afresh by every sign that
the world does not feel it owes the pitiful survivors anything, and
