The Jewish State<\/em>. He was particularly shocked by hearing the cry, \u201cDeath to the Jews\u201d in Paris, particularly in France where, \u201cif the suspicion that rested on an individual (Alfred Dreyfus) was projected onto all, it meant that a Jew, even in this privileged country was not in his own home.\u201d<\/p>\nHerzl set out to convince monarchs and leaders to establish a home for the Jews. He visited heads of state, royalty and philanthropists, and reunited Israel as a nation, in Basel, for the First Zionist Congress. In London, 10,000 Jews came to hear him. In Vienna, another 10,000.<\/p>\n
His schedule was hectic, his leadership challenged and he succumbed to illness at age 44. Londres notes: \u201cHerzl is dead. His dream lives on!\u201d Londres writes, \u201cThree thousand two hundred forty-seven years after Moses, he succeeded Moses.\u201d And, \u201cHe awoke a people that had slumbered for nineteen centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so, Londres embarks on his mission to describe \u201cthe state of the Jews in the world to the French.\u201d In London, he speaks with immigrant Jews and recognizes that, in countries like Poland and Romania, due to antisemitism, \u201cA Jew over there is always a Jew. He may be a man, but he is neither a Romanian nor a Pole. And if he is a man, he must be prevented from growing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Londres places into historical perspective the Lord\u2019s designation of Abraham as the patriarch and assigning to him the land of Canaan around 1920 BCE, and the assignation of the land at the San Remo conference, also in 1920, but CE. At San Remo, the Supreme Allied Council gave England the mandate to establish a \u201cJewish national home\u201d in Palestine. Londres notes wryly that from 1920 BCE to 1920 CE, \u201cthe Arabs have not stopped creating an uproar. They deny that Palestine is the cradle of the Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n
Londres describes the development of Jew-hatred; the loathing of Jewish adherence to the laws of the Torah, followed by the birth of Christianity and then dispersion to hostile nations. They were ghettoized, marked with yellow badges, forced to give up Judaism in Spain and blamed for cholera in Germany, whereupon they moved to Poland followed by Chmielnicki, the leader of Ukrainian Cossacks, who \u201cpassed through all the ghettos to massacre 300,000 Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n
The French Revolution led to greater acceptance of Jews, less so in Vienna. But Londres was familiar with the Jews of the West. He wanted to see those in the East, and journeyed to Prague and followed others to Mukachevo, in Subcarpathian Russia. Jews were driven from their homes in Moravia, Poland and Russia into misery and poverty, all described by Londres, the roving journalist.<\/p>\n
Even in Prague, in a more civil society in the heart of Europe, he notes, \u201cChased, beaten, mocked, unable to leave their concentration camp, accused of witchcraft, sorcery, illnesses, their garments marked with a yellow badge, they walk stooped, pale and thin, beards flowing, down the little alleys of yore, with big strides, heads bent, toward this old synagogue. It was their sole homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is the vision that prompts him to use the words \u201cconcentration camp\u201d for the Jewish area they cannot leave and the yellow badge to mark them, in the year 1929?<\/p>\n
The reader will soon enough discover what Londres began to envision. For he discusses as well the absence of Jewish rights, their lack of political power combined with the ever-increasing torment of pogroms, forced conscription and soul-destroying laws. Londres emphasizes that Jews without a land of their own create a space in which to worship and temporarily escape the travails of their wretched lives. He knows there is no future for these Eastern European Jews who happen to number six million, without including those in Germany, France and the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
He describes the pogroms of Kishinev in 1903 and the great pogrom of 1918-1920 in Ukraine and eastern Galicia, where 150,000 Jews were murdered and 300,000 wounded. Londres notes there is no particular reason for pogroms except one: \u201cthe fundamental cause of pogroms is loathing of Jews. Then come the pretexts.\u201d In Bessarabia, he meets a chalutz (pioneer) from Palestine urging Jews to leave their misery. Alter Fischer had survived a Cossack pogrom and fled to Palestine. Now a proud Palestinian Jew on a mission, he attempts to inspire the Jews of Kishinev. At one point, he rages, \u201cBy dint of waiting for him [the Messiah], they will all end up slaughtered. They are like the inhabitants of Stromboli, waiting for the volcano to erupt.\u201d<\/p>\n
In contrast to \u201cthe wild Jews of the Marmarosh Mountains, the frightened Jews of Transylvania, of Bessarabia and of Bukovina, the begging, beaten Jews of Lwow\u201d stands Warsaw, which is, in Londres\u2019 words, \u201cthe Jewish queen of Europe.\u201d Three hundred and sixty thousand Jews \u2013 but living in a country where, \u201cOne of the main pillars of Poland\u2019s political program is to \u2018crunch the Jews.\u2019 A Jew cannot work for the government, or the army, or a university.\u201d<\/p>\n
Londres\u2019 descriptions of the depth and intensity of Jewish life reflect an admiration of the commitment to study and education. But, he worries. His travel companion from Prague, Ben, offers these words, \u201cThe Jews of Russia? They know they are enjoying a truce now. Bolshevism has brought them peace. But every regime that follows Bolshevism will bring them war. And they will pay the price. It will be even worse than Petliura\u2019s pogroms. Everyone knows this and it will be ghastly. In Poland? The situation is worse than it\u2019s ever been. In Romania, the antagonism is blatant. In Czechoslovakia, there is neutrality but also neglect. That\u2019s the picture. Who wouldn\u2019t want to get out?\u201d Ben adds, \u201cAll of us here are not at home. But we are no more than guests wherever we live.\u201d It is 1929.<\/p>\n
Londres travels to Palestine on a vessel, the Sphinx. He exclaims, \u201cHere is the sun! I left Warsaw in the year 5690\u201d (on the Hebrew calendar). \u201cNow I enter year 10\u201d (roughly a decade after the Balfour declaration). Londres exults in the discovery of \u201cHerzl Street! Edmond de Rothschild Boulevard! Max Nordau Street! The synagogue, the main monument in the process of being completed, seems to say it all. It is like a flag, floating over a camp. The sole, unrivaled flag. No crosses in its shadow, no minarets in its radius. Just as when the Temple dominated Jerusalem, before the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Mosque of Omar.\u201d<\/p>\n
In discussing the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and its 400-year occupation, Londres states simply, \u201cVictory came. England puffed its cheeks and exhaled. The Arab kingdom vanished. Israel took its place.\u201d He writes, \u201cThere is no point labouring over historical texts. Whether the settlement of the Jews in Palestine is called a \u2018national home\u2019 rather than a \u2018Jewish state\u2019 does not alter the fact. And the fact is this: this time, the Jews were arriving not as beggars, but as citizens. They were no longer asking for hospitality \u2013 they were taking possession of the land. They would no longer be a tolerated people, but equal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Londres\u2019 remarkable work \u2013 of a period of time wedged in between two world wars, the latter resulting in the destruction of European Jewry \u2013 deserves a wide readership. Londres, the journalist, captures the essence of Jewish life and foreshadows what is to come through his awareness that Jewish survival is not possible and that the wandering Jew is destined to return home.<\/p>\n
Dr. Robert Krell <\/strong>is professor emeritus, department of psychiatry, University of British Columbia, distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and founding president of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Albert Londres was a Parisian journalist born in 1884. He became an international reporter who chose to chronicle human suffering and expose injustice and cruelty. He denounced inhuman conditions in mental asylums, the ordeals of black workers, conditions in a penal colony. His journalistic philosophy: \u201cour profession is not to give pleasure nor to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[7988,801,4242,6531],"class_list":["post-28249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-albert-londres","tag-antisemitism","tag-history","tag-journalism"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"image](\"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/mar-23-books.23.Wandering-Jew_Albert-Londres-cover.jpg\")
<\/a>Londres writes of the 1917 Balfour declaration as well as the betrayal of the Jews following the declaration, because, although the San Marino conference legalized the promise, by 1922, 78% of the British Palestine mandate was severed from becoming a potential Jewish area. And, only 10 years later, in 1939, unbeknown to Londres, who died in 1932 in a fire that broke out on the boat returning him from Shanghai, the slaughter of Europe\u2019s Jews began.<\/p>\n