Haaretz
Adar 11, 5767
A historian has uncovered a pre-World
War Two article Winston Churchill wrote about the persecution of Jews but
then decided not to publish. In the long lost article, the British wartime
leader disapproved of the treatment they experienced but did say of the
Jews: "They have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which
they suffer."
Cambridge University lecturer Richard Toye,
reflecting on his find, said: "While most people would accept that
Churchill was no anti-Semite, this sheds fascinating new light on his
views about Jews which were very inconsistent."
While researching
in the university's Churchill archives, the historian uncovered the
unpublished article in a pile of proofs and press cuttings. "It was a
dramatic moment," he said.
"How The Jews Can Combat Persecution,"
originally written in 1937 when it failed to find a publisher, was finally
picked up in 1940 for publication by the Sunday Depatch
newspaper.
But when the paper's editor formally asked for
permission to use the piece, Churchill's office wrote back and refused,
saying publication was "inadvisable."
Within weeks, Churchill
became prime minister, leading the fight against the Nazi regime which
murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust.
"He may well have had
second thoughts. When he looked at it again, he may well have thought it
wasn't the most intelligent thing to say," Toye told Reuters in an
interview.
He uncovered the article while researching for a book he
was writing on "Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals For
Greatness."
In the piece, Churchill argued that "the wickedness of
the persecutors" was not the only reason for the ill-treatment of Jews
down the ages.
He called Jews sober, industrious and law-abiding
and praised their readiness to fight and die for the country they lived
in.
But he added: "Yet there are times when one feels instinctively
that all this is only another manifestation of the difference, the
separateness of the Jew."
Echoing modern-day debates about
multi-culturalism, Churchill criticised what he called the "aloofness" of
Jewish people from wider society and urged them to make the effort to
integrate.
He criticized Jewish employers in the clothing trade for
exploiting the readiness of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to work for
lower wages. He also criticized the refugees themselves for their
readiness to accept rock-bottom salaries.
Toye said "I do find it
perverse to blame persecuted people for their own persecution. There is a
lot of contorted logic there."
Speculating on why the article never
saw the light of day, he concluded: "In terms of its potential impact on
public opinion, it was one thing to say these things in 1937 but quite
different to say them in 1940 when Britain was at war."