From
an Internet pageChurchill's "Jewish
mother"
by David Burbridge ("David
B.")
IN the British Press there has recently been some
controversy about Winston Churchill and alleged
anti-semitism. An unpublished
magazine article of 1938, not written by Churchill but
allegedly approved for publication in his name,
contains references to Jews which would get him into
trouble today, though at the time they would have seemed
relatively innocuous.
But what I want to discuss is a claim that Churchill
himself had Jewish ancestry on his mother's side.
According to a letter by Mark Corby in the London
Times on 22 March, 'his mother Jenny
Jacobson/Jerome was a New York Jew, as was pointed out by
Moshe Kohn in an article in The Jerusalem
Post of January 18, 1993'. But a letter on 26 March
from David Watson denied this, claiming that
Churchill's American ancestry could be traced back to the
early 18th century, without a sign of any 'Jacobson'.
Now I don't personally care much whether Churchill had
Jewish ancestry or not, but I see from the internet that
this claim (specifically, that his maternal grandfather
changed his name from Jacobson to Jerome) is popular in
certain circles. Why did Churchill hate that nice Mr
Hitler? Why did he betray the Aryan race? Why, it's
obvious, isn't it -- he was one of those!
So I wanted to see whether there is any basis for the
claim. I began with an internet
search, but found nothing to support the claim
other than repeated references to the article by Moshe
Kohn. Since a newspaper article is hardly a good primary
source, this does not inspire confidence.
My next step was to visit a library with excellent
biographical collections. There are countless biographies
of Churchill, a few of his mother Jenny, and one of his
mother's father, Leonard Jerome. On browsing
relevant parts of these, I found them unanimous in
tracing Churchill's Jerome ancestry back to Timothy
Jerome, of Huguenot descent, who migrated to America
around 1717. Of course, this might all be an elaborate
cover story, but if so it is one that could easily be
refuted.
The biographies contain references to public figures,
such as Leonard Jerome's uncle Judge Hiram Jerome,
and records in public archives which could be checked by
anyone suspicious of a cover-up.
The only serious gap in the official records of
Churchill's ancestry is a long way back in the female
line, which cannot be traced beyond his
great-great-grandmother, Anna Baker. According to
family legend, she was part-Iroquois Indian, which the
family believed accounted for the prevalence of dark eyes
or complexion in the family.
This does have a certain whiff of cover-up, but if so
the cover-up may be of something other than Jewish blood.
According to one account, Churchill himself believed
there was a drop of black somewhere in his ancestry (see
Elisabeth Kehoe, Fortune's Daughters: The
Extravagant Lives of the Jerome Sisters (2004), p.4).
In any case, the usual claims of Jewish ancestry concern
Churchill's mother's father, Leonard Jerome, and not the
female line leading back to Anna Baker.
Nevertheless, to be sure that I had not missed
anything, I searched the internet again, and found two
pieces of 'evidence' occasionally cited in support of the
story. One is a claim that Churchill's cousin, the Irish
writer and politician Shane Leslie, wrote a
biography of Churchill which was left unpublished at
Churchill's insistence, allegedly because it let the cat
out of the bag concerning the Jeromes' Jewish
ancestry.
But Shane Leslie also wrote his own autobiography,
Long Shadows, published after Churchill's death,
in which he described his Jerome ancestors. Leslie passed
on his researches into the family history to his
daughter, Anita Leslie, who wrote biographies of
both Leonard and Jenny Jerome, and to Ralph
Martin, biographer of Jenny (Ralph G. Martin, Lady
Randolph Churchill: A Biography (1969).) None of
these books mentions any Jewish ancestry.
If Shane Leslie had discovered a secret which he was
persuaded not to publish during Churchill's lifetime, why
would he continue to suppress it after Churchill's
death?
THE other piece of 'evidence' is a claim that the
historian David Irving had proved Churchill's
Jewish ancestry in his book Churchill's War. If
David Irving told me the time, I would check five
different clocks before I accepted it, but he does
admittedly have a reputation for finding new documentary
evidence (usually provided by elderly Nazis), so I
naturally went back to the library to look at Churchill's
War.
In volume
1, published in 1987, I find nothing to suggest any
Jewish ancestry for Churchill. But in volume 2, published
in 2001, at last we find a reference - in a real,
published book -- to Churchill being 'born of partly
Jewish blood' and having a 'part-Jewish mother' (page
xii). So I turned with trembling hands to the end-notes
(page 855) to find the documentary basis for these
assertions - only to find nothing but a reference to
Moshe Kohn's article of 18 January 1993!
So it seems that all roads lead to Kohn. I therefore
decided I must track down his article in The Jerusalem
Post. I did not expect this to be easy, but I found
that the JP has searchable online archives going
back at least to 1993.
On searching for articles by Moshe Kohn referring to
Churchill I got a surprise. There is indeed a relevant
article, but its date is not 18 January, as stated by
Irving and all the others, but 15 January. This has two
fairly obvious implications: first, those repeating the
incorrect date are copying directly
or indirectly from David Irving, and second, they
have not read the article for themselves. If they had,
they might be less confident in their assertions.
The article itself is clearly aimed at an Israeli
audience with Israeli preoccupations. It begins with a
passage of heavy sarcasm:
THANK
God - at last we know the truth about Winston
Churchill: he was a psychopathic revanchist, obsessed
with defeating Germany in World War II, thus
preventing Adolf Hitler from saving civilization from
the Red menace. Several rational British historical
revisionists have just revealed this, half a century
after Churchill inflicted all that pain and grief on
those poor Germans.
These 'revisionists' are not named, but David Irving
himself (at that time still not entirely discredited) is
one obvious target. Another possibility is John
Charmley, whose book Churchill: A Political
Biography, appeared around the beginning of 1993.
But Kohn continues:
Or
is it a related idiosyncrasy that bothers those
revisionists? I mean the streak that caused Churchill
to draw on Jewish - particularly biblical - modes and
language, especially regarding the treatment of
enemies like Hitler and Mussolini. Are they
particularly galled by his penchant for calling on
God, despite his rejection of "the Christian or any
other form of religious belief" (as he wrote to his
mother in 1898)? And with typical Churchillian
cunning, he did all that in the name of "Christian
civilization"... (That cunning no doubt came to
Churchill in the Jewish genes transmitted by his
mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, née Jenny
Jacobson/Jerome. )
And that's it. That is the entirety of Kohn's
discussion of Churchill's alleged Jewish ancestry. It is
not even clear that it is intended seriously. (Kohn died
in 2005, so we cannot ask him.)
The whole of Kohn's first paragraph, directed at the
'revisionists', is written in a mode of sarcasm. (The
rest of the article is a defence of Churchill, who is
presented as a model for hard-line Israeli
politicians.)
Kohn evidently suspected that the revisionists had an
underlying anti-semitic motive, and his reference to
Churchill's Jewish ancestry may be nothing more than an
allusion to some pre-existing anti-semitic rumour or
fantasy. On the assumption that Moshe Kohn himself was
Jewish -- which seems a fair guess -- he would hardly
have seriously referred to 'cunning... in the Jewish
genes': a stereotypical piece of anti-semitic
nonsense.
But even if Kohn's reference to Churchill's Jewish
ancestry was intended seriously, it is of no value as
historical evidence, and no competent historian would
rely on it without supporting documentation.
I conclude that there is no worthwhile evidence to
support the claim of Jewish ancestry, and there seems to
be strong documentary evidence against it. I say seems,
because I have not examined the archival sources for
myself. But the burden of proof is on those who wish to
show that the official account is false.
PPS: While on Churchillian themes, I take the
opportunity to recommend the HBO/BBC drama The
Gathering Storm. I was impressed by this when it was
first screened, and I watched it again recently on DVD.
It has a superb cast, including Albert Finney, Vanessa
Redgrave, Jim Broadbent, Derek Jacobi, Tom Wilkinson,
Linus Roache, Lena Headey, Celia Imrie, Hugh
Bonneville, and a host of familiar character actors
in minor roles. Indeed, this got a bit distracting: I
kept expecting Hugh Laurie to pop up playing
Bertie Wooster. Also, the background music was sometimes
intrusive. And the script (like Churchill's memoirs on
which it was based) was probably unfair to Stanley
Baldwin. But all quibbles apart, it was a fine drama,
above all for Albert Finney's performance as Churchill.
-- David B
VERY
interesting, comments David Irving. I know only what
The Jerusalem Post printed. I will eventually
correct the bad date in new editions of "Churchill's
War", vol. ii: "Triumph in
Adversity" . I don't
know who drew my attention to The Jerusalem Post
article. I don't buy the argument that it was being
sarcastic or tongue-in-cheek. Who is David B? His
research appears very thin (" I began with an Internet
search").
write
to David Irving