"Indeed, we [Jews] were at the leading edge of communist totalitarianism, one of the most murderous movements of the 20th century." -- Barbara Amiel, Maclean's Magazine, September 27, 1999

September 27, 1999

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Jews and Sunshine

by Barbara Amiel

Sept. 17, 1999. Yom Kippur, 5760/2000. -- Each year at synagogue as we mourn for our dead, I try to understand why the Jews have been hated with such persistence in so many cultures over so many centuries. Curiously, this year it may be popular culture that sheds a bit of light on the question.

October's Vanity Fair has an excerpt from Vatican expert John Cornwell's forthcoming book, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. The book claims to have uncovered new facts about Pius XII's alleged anti-Semitism. The most significant evidence cited is a letter described as a "time bomb" lying in the Vatican archives. That letter was written from Munich by papal nuncio Eugenio Pacelli (later Pius XII, 1939-1958) to the Vatican. It was 1919 and Germany was in chaos. The elected social democrats were trying to repel Marxist revolutionaries fighting to proclaim a Soviet republic. Pacelli's letter describes the scene at the palace in Munich taken over by revolutionaries under their leader Eugen Levien.

"The confusion," he writes, "totally chaotic, the filth completely nauseating ... the building, once the home of a king, resounding with screams, vile language, profanities ... a gang of young women, of dubious appearance, Jews, like all the rest of them, hanging around in all the offices with provocative demeanour and suggestive smiles. The boss of this female gang was Levien's mistress, a young Russian woman, a Jew and, a divorcée, who was in charge."

This quote is cited as proof of the future pope's anti-Semitism. But while there are grave questions to be answered about Pius XII's silence during the Second World War, I can't see how this 1919 letter constitutes anti-Semitism. As an observation, the letter was at worst an exaggeration. If he had written "Jews, like a disproportionate number of them," he would have been quite accurate. Jews feature in wildly disproportionate numbers among communists and revolutionaries.

Most institutions, past and present, wrongly believe that they can support, tolerate or use one evil to fight another. I suspect that in the 1930s, Pius XII saw communism as a greater threat than Nazism and acted accordingly. It's a separate matter that one would have hoped that the church, being in the business of morality, might have been an exception to the rule. But the germane point here is that Jews were not only seen as Christ killers but as the assassins of democracy.

Indeed, we were at the leading edge of communist totalitarianism, one of the most murderous movements of the 20th century.

It's a different matter that we were also at the leading edge of those fighting it. A quite remarkable insight into this phenomenon took place in last week's Toronto International Film Festival. I cannot speak highly enough of the importance of the film Sunshine, the story of three generations of Hungarian Jews that premièred at the festival. This is a film of incredible ambition, tackling major themes about the evolution of good instincts into totalitarianism and -- for the first time -- the similarities between Nazism and communism. Here is the tale almost every Jewish family knows in one form or another: the hardworking grandfather begets the liberal son who begets the revolutionary grandson. The film covers 1890 to 1990 and though it could have been told through the eyes of a gentile family, it seems to me best to do it through a Jewish family. Because in some very curious ways, Hungarian Jews, like Jews throughout time, have been disproportionately represented at the edge of some of the finest and nastiest trends of humanity.

In my lifetime, with the obvious exception of Nazism, it's hard to think of any political or artistic movement in which Jews have not been statistically over-represented -- from the 1960s Weathermen to more positive areas of public policy and the arts.

It was difficult to be a member of the Black Panthers, but Jewish support of them gave us Radical Chic. There is no greater influence on popular culture than Hollywood, and Hollywood is almost synonymous with Jewish overrepresentation. None of this bad, though anti-Semites try to make hay out of it and the politically correct try to deny it. Post-war Jews continue to be drawn to illiberalism -- to the totalitarian instincts of the politically correct eco-feminists and their allies. Similarly, they are drawn to the finest manifestations of jurisprudence and philosophy. If gentiles tend to keep their heads down and make money, Jews seem to have the instincts of moths to a flame -- a fatal attraction to the limelight of the leading edge. And in the past 100 years, those notions have included as much bad as good. Which may be why we are so often disliked.

The popular explanation is that our attraction to ideas is because we are a people of the book. I think it is because outside Israel we live with the feeling, perhaps subconscious, that we are guests in the countries we inhabit. As a group without a franchise, we have a basic interest in a just and equitable society and so latch on to any idea from liberalism to communism that promises justice. Justice is in our self-interest.

Perhaps the world will come to see that if we are so often at the leading edge of bad ideas, we are also among the greatest victims of those same ideas. I don't know. All I can do is pray and ask God to inscribe us all in his book with understanding and patience.

Our opinion

 Barbaria Amiel is a journalist of unusual courage and outspokenness. We have not forgotten that at the time that the whole of the Fleet Street gutter press was baying for David Irving's blood after he returned from Moscow on July 4, 1992 with the long-lost diaries of Dr Joseph Goebbels in his possession, she alone spoke up for his abilities in an editorial in The Sunday Times newspaper which was to publish them.