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PARTISAN REVIEW
by the multiplying evidences that antisemitism has now reached an
intensity in some Western countries almost equal to that observed in
Germany a few years before the Nazis came to power.
Some liberals and friends of the Jews are puzzled. After all, they
point out, this is not the first time in recent history that millions of
innocent human beings have been destroyed by despots. Without mak–
ing comparisons between degrees of infamy and differences in the
techniques of murder, Stalin has probably killed more people from
the time of the man-made Ukrainian famine in 1932 to the present
than even Hitler. When these events happened, and similar ones in
China and India, the Jews were no more and no less indignant than
anyone else. Why do they seem so "hysterical" now?
The answer is simple. When six million Jews are slaughtered,
the remaining Jews cannot but feel uneasy about their own position;
when six million Gentiles are slaughtered, the remaining Gentiles
do not feel uneasy. Whether the feeling in the case of the Jews is
justified- and I believe it is not- is hardly the point. That it exists
is a sufficient explanation of the great differences in attitude, speech,
and behavior of many Jews throughout the world, and not least in
the United States.
In certain respects these differences are not desirable even from
the standpoint of Jewish survival and the quality of Jewish life. A
people that has, by and large, been rational and pacific now seeks
by an act of resolution to be belligerent and to cultivate the
mystique
of action. The desperate courage and will-to-death-through-resistance
which would have been appropriate throughout Europe-and not only
in the last days of the Warsaw ghetto-in combating the Nazi ex–
termination squads, is now on tap to meet difficulties that are honor–
ably negotiable.
It
was not Hitler who was assassinated but Berna–
dotte. And the Jews have now created their own non-Jewish D.P.'s,
more numerous than the remaining Jewish D.P.'s in Europe. Because
the Nazis fooled them again and again, they have become overly sus–
picious of those who kept the Nazis at bay. Goebbels used to assert
that the Jews were not as intelligent as they or the world believed
because they persisted in misreading Hitler's clearly expressed inten–
tions with respect to them. To prove their intelligence now, many
read Clement Atlee's words in such a way that only a Nazi could
have uttered them. And as for Bevin!
