OS 
 
 145 
 
 P7 
 
 A51 
 
 1921 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
THE "PROTOCOLS" 
 
 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 AND THE JEWS 
 
 An Address 
 to Their Fellow-Citizens by 
 American Jewish Organizations 
 
 Published December 1, 1920 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE 
 
 1921 
 
THE "PROTOCOLS" 
 
 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 AND THE JEWS 
 
 An Address 
 to Their Fellow-Citizens by 
 American Jewish Organizations 
 
 Published December 1, 1920 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE. 
 ^ 1921 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924087981175 
 
TO OUR FELLOW CITIZENS: 
 
 During the war, by secret agencies, a docu- 
 ment variously called "The Procotols of the 
 Elders of Zion," "The Protocols of the Meet- 
 ings of the Zionist Men of Wisdom," and 
 "The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion," 
 was clandestinely circulated, in typewritten 
 form, among public officials and carefully 
 selected civilians, for the purpose of giving 
 rise to the behef that the Jews, in conjunc- 
 tion with Freemasons, had been for centuries 
 engaged in n conspiracy to produce revolu- 
 tion and anarchy, by means of which they 
 hoped to attain the control of the world by 
 the establishment of some sort of despotic 
 rule. Some months ago this document was 
 published in England. More recently it 
 has appeared in print in the United States 
 and thousands of copies have been circulated 
 with an air of mystery among legislators, 
 joumahsts, clergymen and teachers, members 
 of clubs, and indiscriminately to the gen- 
 eral public^ The London Morning Post has 
 given out a series of articles as a commentary 
 upon The Protocols, in which the charge of 
 an unholy conspiracy between Jews and 
 Freemasons is elaborated, and Bolshevism is 
 characterized as a movement of, for and by 
 the Jews and is declared to be a fulfilment 
 of The Protocols. These articles, whose 
 authorship is not disclosed, have now ap- 
 peared in book form under the title "The 
 Cause of World Unrest." During the past 
 six months there have been sent forth weekly 
 in Henry Ford's organ. The Dearborn Inde- 
 pendent, attacks of extraordinary virulence 
 upon the Jews. These assaults upon the 
 honor of the Jewish people are all founded 
 on The Protocols and on the discredited 
 
literature of Russian and German anti- 
 Semitism, inspired by the minions of autoc- 
 racy. Parrot-like they repeat the abomi- 
 nable charges that can only appeal to the 
 credulity of a stunted intelligence — charges 
 long since conceded to be unfounded by all 
 fair-minded men. Ford is employing his 
 great wealth in scattering broadcast his ful- 
 minations, regardless of consequences. 
 
 When the Jews of the United States first 
 learned of these malevolent prints, they 
 deemed it beneath their dignity to take 
 notice of them because they regarded them 
 as a mere recrudescence of mediaeval bigotry 
 and stupidity showing upon their face their 
 utter worthlessness. These publications 
 have, however, been put in circulation to 
 such an extent that 'it is believed that the 
 time has come, humihating though it be to 
 them, for the Jews to make answer to these 
 libels and to the unworthy insinuations and 
 innuendoes that have been whispered against 
 them. 
 
 Speaking as representatives of the Jewish 
 people, familiar with the history of Judaism 
 in its various phases and with the movements, 
 past and present, in Jewish life, we say with 
 all solemnity: 
 
 (1) The Protocols are a base forgery. 
 There has never been an organization of 
 Jews known as The Elders of Zion, or The 
 Zionist Men of Wisdom, or The Wise Men 
 of Zion, or bearing any other similar name. 
 There has never existed a secret or other 
 Jewish body organized for any purpose such 
 as that imphed in The Protocols. The Jew- 
 ish people have never dreamed of a Jewish 
 dictatorship, of a destruction of religion, of 
 an interference with industrial prosperity, 
 or of an overthrow of civilization. The Jews 
 have never conspired with the Freemasons, 
 or with any other body, for any purpose. 
 
From the time ox the destruction of the 
 Temple at Jerusalem by Titus, the Jews have 
 had no political state. For centuries they 
 were forced to wander from land to land, to 
 flee for refuge wherever they might find it 
 against bitter persecution. They were pent 
 up in ghettoes, were deprived of even the 
 shadow of civil or political rights, and were 
 made the objects of every possible form of 
 discrimination. It is little more than fifty 
 years since the Jews of Western Europte be- 
 came pohtically emancipated. Until the 
 outbreak of the World War the Jews of 
 Eastern Europe, constituting a majority of 
 all the Jews of the world, were not even per- 
 mitted to exercise the rights of citizenship 
 in lands where they and their ancestors had 
 dwelt for generations. The great mass of 
 the Jews were hampered in every way in 
 their efforts to earn a livelihood. Far from 
 desiring to govern the world, they were con- 
 tent with the opportunity to live. Numer- 
 ically they constitute less than one per cent, 
 of the population of the earth; and more 
 than one-half of them are on the verge of 
 starvation. The suggestion that, in their 
 feebleness, they have been planning in 
 secret conclave to seize absolute power and 
 to dominate the ninety-nine per cent, of 
 non-Jews upon the globe is a ridiculous in- 
 vention than which even madness, can con- 
 jure nothing more preposterous. 
 
 Where is the habitat of these so-called 
 Elders of Zion, by whatever name they may 
 be called.'' Who are these hidden sages.? 
 Whence do they come.'' What is the nature 
 of their organization? The distributors of 
 The Protocols are silent on that subject. 
 Whence come these pretended Protocols? 
 There have been various versions. One 
 Serge Nilus, of whose identity little is 
 known, a Russian mystic and an ardent 
 
supporter of Czarism, claims to have re- 
 ceived them in Russia, in 1901, in manu- 
 script form, from a Russian office-holder, 
 who stated that the manuscript had been 
 originally obtained by a lady, whose name 
 is not given, and who, he said, obtained 
 them in a mysterious way. In what lan- 
 guage they were written is not stated. 
 Where that manuscript now is does not 
 appear. Nilus asserts that he submitted 
 The Protocols to one of the Russian Grand 
 Dukes, who, after examination, returned 
 them with the despairing message: "Too 
 late." Apparently there was no room for 
 them in the Russian archives, and they 
 suggested no task for the Czar's ubiquitous 
 police to perform. In 1905, Nilus pubUshed 
 at Tsarskoje Selo a second edition of a 
 mystical book entitled "The Great in the 
 Little," the first edition having been pub- 
 lished in 1901. Into this later edition he 
 incorporated for the first time The Proto- 
 cols, which he claimed to have had in his 
 possession for four years. In January, 
 1917, he published another book under the 
 title "It is Near, at the Door," purporting 
 to foretell "the coming of the Anti-Christ 
 and the Kingdom of the Devil on Earth." 
 In this book he announces that he had only 
 then learned authoritatively 'from Jewish 
 sources (what they were is not explained) 
 that these Protocols were nothing other 
 than a strategic plan for the conquest of 
 the world, of putting it under the yoke of 
 Israel, "the struggler-against-God," a plan 
 worked out by the leaders of the Jewish 
 people during the many centuries of their 
 dispersion, and finally presented to the 
 Council of Elders by the Prince of Exile, 
 Theodor Herzl, at the time of the first 
 Zionist Congress summoned by him at 
 Basle in August, 1897. He declared that 
 
The Protocols were signed by the Zionist 
 representatives of the thirty-third degree of 
 initiation; that they were secretly removed 
 from the complete file of Protocols that per- 
 tained to the first Zionist Congress; that 
 they were taken from the secret vaults at 
 the main Zionist office, which, it is said, "at 
 present is located in French territory." 
 
 The Protocols as published bear no signa- 
 tures. The identity of the Zionist represen- 
 tatives by whom they are claimed to have 
 been signed is left untold. The location of 
 the main Zionist office and of the secret 
 vaults from which The Protocols were 
 secretly removed remains a secret. It is, 
 however, a matter of history that the first 
 Zionist Congress was publicly held by Jews 
 who came from various parts of Europe for 
 the purpose of considering the misery of 
 their brethren in Eastern Europe and of 
 enabling them to find shelter in the Holy 
 Land. Theodor Herzl was a distiaguished 
 journalist, a man of true nobility of charac- 
 ter. He presided at the Congress, all of 
 whose deUberations were held ia the light 
 of day. The iasinuation that there was a 
 thirty-third, or any other, degree of initia- 
 tion in this organization is merely a malicious 
 effort to bring the Jews into parallelism with 
 the Freemasons and thus to subject them to 
 all the fanciful and fantastic charges that 
 have from time to time been laid at the door 
 of Freemasonry, obHvious of the fact that 
 fifteen Presidents of the United States, in- 
 cluding Washington, and many of the lead- 
 ing statesmen of Europe and America, have 
 been members of that order. 
 
 Nilus and his associates belonged to the 
 Russian bureaucracy. In 1905, through the 
 Black Hundreds, that body sought in every 
 way to crush the Jews and to prevent the 
 liberalization of the government. The time 
 
was propitious for the perpetration of a 
 political forgery by a government that 
 habitually resorted to the employment of 
 agents provocateurs, a government which only 
 a few years later, against the protest of the 
 enlightened clergy of the world, ineifectually 
 sought to convict Mendel Beilis on the 
 charge of ritual murder. It is significant 
 that one of his prosecutors has been active 
 in distributing manuscript copies of The 
 Protocols throughout the United States. 
 
 Irrespective of this history, bristling with 
 suspicion, an analysis of The Protocols shows 
 that on their face they are a fabrication and 
 that they must have emanated from the 
 bitter opponents of democracy. They are 
 replete with cynical references to the French 
 Revolution, and to the conceptions of liberty, 
 equality and fraternity. They uphold privi- 
 lege and autocracy. They belittle education. 
 They condemn rehgious Kberty. They 
 assert that political freedom is an idea and 
 not a fact, and that the doctrine that a gov- 
 ernment is nothing but a steward of the 
 people is a mere phrase. These are the very 
 doctrines that one would expect from the 
 protagonists of autocracy. Nothing can be 
 more foreign to Jewish thought and aspira- 
 tion than these brutal theories of reaction. 
 That the Jews, whose very life has been a 
 prayer for the blessings of Uberty and equal- 
 ity, should hold them in contempt is un- 
 thinkable. 
 
 The document throughout is farcical in its 
 absurdities. In the Russian original there 
 is a passage, significantly omitted from the 
 translation, to the effect that the English 
 are the descendants of the Lost Tribes of 
 Israel and the British Government is vio- 
 lently attacked for its liberaUsm. If climax 
 there be to all this folly, it lies in the idea 
 set forth in The Protocols that "the world 
 
 10 
 
ruler is to spring from the dynastic roots of 
 King David" and that "the King of Israel 
 will become the real Pope of the Universe 
 and the Patriarch of the International 
 Church," whatever that may mean. 
 
 It is needless, however, to elaborate, when 
 one considers that the editor of the London 
 Morning Post, in his introduction to "The 
 Cause of the World Unrest," himself doubts 
 the genuineness of The Protocols, and that 
 the anonymous author of that book, after 
 using them as his text, is unable to give 
 them any higher certificate than that they 
 may or may not be genuine. Indeed, he 
 goes so far as to say: 
 
 "We have said that this document flashes 
 a blaze of light, and so it does, but whether 
 this document is genuine or not, whether 
 the blaze of light is true or false, can only 
 be judged by internal evidence and proba- 
 bilities. We may say at once that Nilus 
 advances nothing in the nature of real 
 evidence to prove the document, and that 
 his account of how it came into his hands 
 consists of assertion only, without evidence 
 to support it." 
 
 And yet a document, thus discredited by 
 its sponsors, is made the basis of an indict- 
 ment against an entire people. 
 
 (2) The contention that the genuineness 
 of The Protocols is established by the out- 
 break of Bolshevism in Russia twelve years 
 after their publication, and that Bolshevism 
 is a Jewish movement, is absurd in theory 
 and absolutely untrue in fact. As well 
 might it be said that a forged deed is genuine 
 because twenty years after its date a relative 
 of the person whose name is forged is falsely 
 charged with being a distiu"ber of the peace. 
 
 To say that the Jews are responsible for 
 Bolshevism is a deliberate falsehood. The 
 originators of Bolshevism were exclusively 
 
 11 
 
non-Jews. While it is true that there are 
 Jews among the Bolshevists, notably Trot- 
 sky, they represent a small fraction of the 
 Jews and of the followers of Bolshevism. 
 Lenine, who belonged to the Russian aris- 
 tocracy and has not a drop of Jewish blood 
 in his veins, was the creator as he has been 
 the motive power of the Soviets. Tchicherin, 
 who has conducted their foreign affairs, 
 Bucharin, Krassin and Kalinin, all non- 
 Jews, are, with Lenine, the brains of the 
 Communist Party. 
 
 The Bolshevist cabinet, known as the 
 People's Commissars, consists of twenty 
 members, of whom Trotsky and Sverdlov 
 are the only Jews, and they are Jews merely 
 by birth. Of the Central Committee of 
 the Communist Party, including Trotsky, 
 there are four Jews out of thirteen. The 
 so-called Extraordiaary Commission, whose 
 function it is to suppress opposition to the 
 Bolshevist regime from within, is directed 
 by a triumvirate consisting of a Pole and 
 two Letts, none of whom is of Jewish origin. 
 Although Trotsky is the head of the War 
 Department, his General Staff is composed 
 exclusively of non-Jews. 
 
 In "The Cause of World Unrest" a Hst of 
 fifty names is given, most of whom are 
 classified as Jews and Bolshevists, in order 
 to establish the thesis that "nearly all of 
 the Bolshevist leaders are Jews." An exam- 
 ination of the list shows that ten of the Jews 
 included in the list are the leaders of the 
 anti-Bolshevist movement in Russia; that 
 a number of those who are classified ia the 
 list as Jews are not Jews at all; that a large 
 proportion of those classified as Jews are 
 men who are so obscure and hold positions 
 so inconspicuous that whether or not they 
 are Jews is not only uncertain but unim- 
 portant. They are certainly not leaders. 
 12 
 
.On the other hand, the leaders of the 
 Mensheviki, who are the sworn foes of 
 Bolshevism, are to a large extent Jews. 
 Among the chiefs of the Constitutional Demo- 
 cratic Party of Russia, who are strongly op- 
 posed to the Soviets, are Viaaver, Sliosberg, 
 Pasmanik, Kaminka, Landau and Friedman, 
 all prominent Jews. Among the leaders of 
 the People's Socialist, the Socialist Revolu- 
 tionary, and the Menshevik section of the 
 Social Democratic parties, bitter opponents 
 of the Bolsheviks, are a large number of 
 Jews. The leading anti-Bolshevist news- 
 papers, which of necessity are published 
 outside of Russia, have Jews upon their 
 editorial staffs. An overwhelming majority 
 of Russian Jews have been ruined by the 
 coercive measures of the Soviets. They 
 have submitted to the confiscation of their 
 property and are undergoing unspeakable 
 hardships. The Orthodox Jews, whose 
 numbers preponderate, remaining loyal to 
 the faith of their fathers, regard the Bolshe- 
 viks as the enemies of all religion, and, 
 therefore, hold the doctrines of Bolshevism 
 in abhorrence. With comparatively few 
 exceptions the Jews are looked upon by the 
 Bolsheviks as belonging to the hated bour- 
 geoisie and as favoring capitaHsm. The 
 Zionists, who constitute a numerous and 
 important element of the Jews of Russia, 
 have been denounced by the Soviets as 
 counter-revolutionary, and many of them 
 have been cast into prison and threatened 
 with death — ^Zionists, we repeat, who are the 
 followers of Herzl. 
 
 If the Jews are to be condemned because 
 of a Trotsky, who has never in the sUghtest 
 degree concerned himself with Judaism or 
 the welfare of the Jews, then there is not a 
 people that has ever hved that might not 
 with equal right be condemned because in 
 13 
 
its membership there were men who are 
 alleged to have advocated hateful doctrines. 
 The Jew has traditionally stood for religion, 
 law, order, the family, and the right of 
 property. It is, therefore, the height of 
 cruelty to charge him with responsibility 
 for Bolshevism, when its doctrines, should 
 they prevail, would inevitably lead to the 
 destruction of Judaism. It is especially a 
 brutal charge when one considers all that 
 the Jew has suffered from the oppressive and 
 discriminatory laws of Russian autocracy 
 and from its effort to suppress every aspir- 
 ation that the Jew had for freedom. It is 
 a great tribute to the patriotism of the 
 Russian Jews that, in spite of the indignities 
 that they had to undergo, hundreds of 
 thousands of them fought under the banner 
 of the Czar, loyally and gallantly, and in 
 large numbers laid down their lives in the 
 AlUed cause. The rosters of the army and 
 navy of the United States contain the 
 names of tens of thousands of Jews bom in 
 Russia who served so faithfully under our 
 colors that they gained the unqualified 
 approval of their officers, and proportion- 
 ately many of them were awarded decora- 
 tions of honor by a grateful country. 
 
 We have refrained from commenting on 
 the libels contained in The Dearborn Inde- 
 pendent. Ford, in the fulness of his knowl- 
 edge, imqualifiedly declares The Protocols 
 to be genuine and argues that practically 
 every Jew is a Bolshevist. We have dealt 
 sufficiently with both of these falsehoods. 
 It is useless in a serious document to analyze 
 the puerile and venomous drivel that he has 
 derived from the concoctions of professional 
 agitators. He is merely a dupe. 
 
 What is the motive of those who have 
 set in motion this new onslaught of anti- 
 Semitism? It is the motive that again and 
 
 14 
 
again has actuated autocracy and its adroit 
 supporters — that of seeking a scapegoat for 
 their own sins, so that they may be enabled 
 under the cover of a false issue to deceive 
 the public. 
 
 It is an attempt to drive into the solidarity 
 of the citizenry of our country that has been 
 its pride and its strength the wedge of dis- 
 cord, by arousing suspicion and inciting 
 overt acts not only against those of Jewish 
 origin but also against Freemasons, in the 
 hope of discrediting free government in the 
 eyes of the European masses and thus facih- 
 tate the restoration of absolutism in gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 The Protocols were manufactured in Rus- 
 sia under the bureaucracy, and the ammimi- 
 tion with which the campaign is conducted 
 has been furnished out of the arsenal of 
 imperialistic Germany and by those who are 
 seeking to restore the Hapsburgs, the Hohen- 
 zoUerns, and the Romanoffs on their former 
 thrones. > Ancient hatred and unreasoning 
 prejudice and a failure to understand and 
 know what the Jew really is, are likewise 
 responsible for the readiness with which 
 these falsehoods have been accepted by those 
 who are ever willing to beheve evil of their 
 fellow-men. 
 
 We have an abiding confidence in the 
 spirit of justice and fairness that permeates 
 the true American, and we are satisfied that 
 our fellow-citizens will not permit the cam- 
 paign of slander and Hbel that has been 
 launched against us to go unreproved. 
 There is enough for all of us to do in the 
 great task of building up our common 
 country and of developing the principles 
 on which it is founded. Let not hatred 
 and misunderstanding arise where peace and 
 harmony, unity and brotherliness, are re- 
 quired to perpetuate all that America rep- 
 
 15 
 
resents and to enable all men to know that 
 within her wide boundaries there is no room 
 for injustice and intolerance. 
 
 THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE 
 
 By Louis Marshall, President 
 
 Cyrus Adler and Julius Rosenwald, Vice-Presidents 
 
 Isaac W. Bbhnheim, Treasurer 
 
 Executive Committee 
 
 Samuel Dorf Oscar S. Straus 
 
 Abram I. Elkus Cyrus L. Sulzbeboeb 
 
 Albert D. Lasker Mayer Sulzberger 
 
 Irving Lehman Isaac M. Ullman 
 
 A. C. Ratshesky a. Leo Weil 
 HoKACE Stern 
 
 THE ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA 
 
 By Julian W. Mack, President 
 Jacob de Haas, Secretary 
 
 THE UNION OF AMERICAN HEBREW 
 
 CONGREGATIONS 
 
 By J. Walter Freiberg, President 
 
 George Zepin, Secretary 
 
 THE UNION OF ORTHODOX JEWISH 
 CONGREGATIONS 
 
 By Herbert S. Goldstein, Secretary 
 
 THE UNITED SYNAGOGUE OF AMERICA 
 
 By Elias L. Solomon, President 
 Charles I. Hoffman, Secretary 
 
 THE PROVISIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR 
 AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS 
 
 By Nathan Straus, President 
 
 Morris Rothenberg, Chairman, Executive Committee 
 
 Stephen S. Wise 
 
 Bernard G. Richards, Secretary 
 
 THE INDEPENDENT ORDER OF B'NAI B'RITH 
 
 AND THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE 
 
 By Adolf Kraus, President 
 
 THE CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF 
 AMERICAN RABBIS 
 
 By Leo M. Franklin, President 
 Felix A. Levy, Secretary 
 
 THE RABBINICAL ASSEMBLY OF THE JEWISH 
 
 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 ^ By Max D. Klein, President 
 
 Samuel Fredman, Secretary 
 
 THE UNION OF ORTHODOX RABBIS OF 
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA 
 
 By M. S. Margolies, President 
 
 16 
 
lili!!' 
 
 PRESS C 
 
 CLARENCES. NAT 
 
 NEW YOt : 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 087 981 175 
 
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