When Victims Rule (pdf)

THE CAUSES OF HOSTILITY TOWARDS JEWS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
sin, ‘the real yeast in the whole scene had been the New York Jewish students
in Wisconsin’ … As late as 1946, one-third of America’s Jews held
a favorable view of the Soviet Union.” [RADOSH, R., 6-5-01]
Decades earlier, note Rothman and Lichter:
“The American Student Union, the most prominent radical student
group during the 1930s, was heavily concentrated in New York colleges
and universities with large Jewish enrollments. And on other campuses,
such as the University of Illinois, substantial portions of its limited
membership were students of Jewish background from New York City.”
[ROTHMAN/LICHTER, 1982, p. 101]
In communist organizations that supposedly idealized a classless society for
all people, it inevitably grated with enduring Jewish self-perception: Jews often
tended to configure as a special caste of controllers of – not a religious, but now
– a secular messianism. As Jeff Schatz notes about pre-World War II Poland:
“Despite the fact that [communist] party authorities consciously strove to promote
classically proletarian and ethnically Polish members to the cadres of
leaders and functionaries, Jewish communists formed 54 percent of the field
leadership of the KPP [Polish Communist Party] in 1935. Moreover, Jews constituted
a total of 75 percent of the party’s technica, the apparatus for production
and distribution of propaganda material. Finally, communists of Jewish
origin occupied most of the seats of the Central Committee of the of the KPPP
[Communists Workers Party of Poland] and the KPP.” [SCHATZ, p. 97] Jews
were at this time 10% of the Polish population.
In Russia, notes Shmuel Ettinger,
“when the Russian Social Democratic Party split into two factions –
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks – both factions had many Jews in their leaderships
(such as Boris Axelrod, Yuly Martov, Lev Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev,
and Lev Kamenev) and among their most active party members.
Many Jews also played a part in the foundations and leadership of the
party … For example, Mikhail Gots was one of the party’s main theoreticians
and Grigory Gershuni was the leader of its fighting organization,
which carried out terrorist acts against the Tsarist regime.” [ETTINGER,
p. 9]
Earlier in Russia, notes Leon Schapiro, “a particularly important part was
played by [Jewish revolutionary Aaron] Zundelovich, who in 1872 had formed
a revolutionary circle mainly among students at the state-sponsored rabbinical
school, at Vilna.” [SCHAPIRO, L., 1961, p. 153]
Also, notes Albert Lindemann, “it seems beyond serious debate that in the
first twenty years of the Bolshevik Party the top ten to twenty leaders included
close to a majority of Jews. Of the seven ‘major figures’ listed in The Makers of
the Russian Revolution, four are of Jewish origin.” [LINDEMANN, p. 429-430]
Among the most important Jewish communists were the aforementioned
Trotsky (originally Lev Davidovich Bronstein) and Grigori Yevseyevich
Zinoviev (“Lenin’s closest associate in the war years”). Lev Borisovich Kamenev
(Rosenfeld) headed the party newspaper, Pravda. Adolf Yoffe was head of the
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