It is almost impossible in our Holocaust-saturated world to even say the word “Jew” without arousing emotion. The mass media of the Western world have made that so with their unrelenting packaging and repackaging of the “Holocaust.” As the respected British historian David Irving says, “It’s spelled ‘Holocaust’ with a capital ‘H’ - trademark applied for.” 2 The Holocaust has gone from being a sidebar of the Second World War to the point where the war has become a historical footnote to the Holocaust. During the one year before this book’s publication, which is well over 50 years after the end of the war, my local (actually “local” is a misnomer, for New Yorkers own it) daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune, had dozens of news and feature articles exploring varying aspects of the Holocaust. In that year, the same paper had barely mentioned the Soviet Gulags where between 20 and 40 million people died, and had only one story that mentioned the Cambodian murder of three million. Not a single article appeared on the slaughter of 30 to 40 million in Red China.

Looking through old newspaper microfiches, I discovered that during the late 1990s there are at least 10 times more news articles on the Holocaust than there were in the late 1940s or 1950s. Rarely does an event become more talked and written about as time passes further from it. For instance, the subject of the Second World War took up a far greater proportion of movies, TV programs, documentaries, books and magazine articles in the late 1950s than in the late 1990s. Not so for the Holocaust: the further we seem to get away from the event, the more it bludgeons us.

It would be a Herculean task to even count all the Holocaust-oriented television news stories and specials, the documentaries and “docudramas”, the books (both fiction and nonfiction), the magazine articles, movies and plays. Tales of Holocaust victims, relatives, survivors, war crimes, criminals, reparations, Holocaust-related art and literature, remembrances and memorials bombard us almost daily. A multimillion-dollar Holocaust museum stands in Washington, D.C. It is right on the most sacred soil in the American Pantheon, the Mall near the Smithsonian Institution, financed in no small part by our tax dollars. Interestingly, it was built long before there was any real effort to build a memorial to the Second World War. It is a massive, modern version of the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.

The Holocaust is not the only Jewish trauma of which we all must grieve, for we see many painful historical accounts and dramatic Hollywood productions about other historical persecutions of the Jews. Jews are victimized by Arab terrorists in the Mideast, by fascists in Europe, and even by Klansmen in the United States. There is a virtually inexhaustible supply of books, articles, movies and plays about individual Jews who have suffered from evil anti-Semites.

Each year, tens of thousands of stories about intelligent, compassionate, unselfish, creative, moral and courageous Jews fill two-foot TV screens and 30-foot movie screens; our newspapers, magazines, and books; our playhouses, pulpits and podiums; our radio waves and satellite transmissions. There are thousands of portrayals of persecuted Jews as innocent, noble and heroic; while their opponents are portrayed as the embodiment of evil. No group on Earth has better public relations than do the Jewish people.

Whether it is Pharaoh’s army with swords unsheathed, chasing the Hebrews or the Czar with his anti-Semitic Cossacks, Hitler with his SS minions dressed in black, an unnamed Palestinian terrorist trying to kidnap Israeli schoolchildren, or the more intimate story of a sensitive Jew mistreated by an anti-Semitic businessman - we have all seen the anti-Semitic stereotype, seen the skeletal bodies, and we have all shared the Jewish pain. I know of this firsthand, for it was true for me as a young man.

At age 12, reading Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl in the school library, I recoiled from the inhumanity of anti-Semitism. By the time I had finished the book, I felt as if I had lost members of my own family. With my shirtsleeves, I covertly wiped away the moisture that had welled up in my eyes.

Only a few times did I have any discussion with my father about Jews, about whom he had only praise. He spoke about my great uncle Nathan, a Methodist minister who had converted from the Jewish faith and married my grandfather’s sister, my great aunt Gussie. Father had enormous respect for Nathan and carried it over to the rest of the people he called the “Hebrews,” thinking that his term carried more dignity than the word “Jews.” At various times he described the “Hebrews” as hardworking, smart, thrifty, and accomplished. “Thrifty” was an accolade that made a distinct impression on me, because I knew that Father looked upon that particular trait as one of the most important. He hated waste of any kind. I learned that lesson at the dinner table a hundred times, having to eat every bite of my food before being excused. I thought thriftiness was as Scottish as the Duke family, but hearing that it was Jewish, impressed me.

Recitals of the Holocaust and Bible stories formed my primary impressions of the Jewish people. Cecil B. DeMille’s movie classics, as typified by The Ten Commandments, led me to identify contemporary Jews with the heroic “Israelites” of the Old Testament. I formed a deep admiration for the “Chosen People.”

How, then, did I go from my early fawning opinion of the Jews to being eventually described as a dangerous “anti-Semite” by the powerful Jewish advocacy organization: the ADL (the oddly-named Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith)? No Jew had ever wronged me; I wasn’t taught anti-Semitism by my parents or friends, nor did I blame them for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Although I categorically reject being labeled anti-Semitic, I certainly believe that - as any other people - Jews deserve praise for their accomplishments and, conversely, they should not be immune from criticism for their failings. The only problem is that in post-World War II, Holocaust-saturated America, any criticism of Jews as a group is viewed as the moral equivalent of condoning mass murder.

If one criticizes any part of Jewish history or conduct, of intolerant aspects of their religion, or even Israel’s Zionist policies, he inevitably acquires the label “anti-Semitic,” a term that could not be more damaging or prejudicial. If one speaks, however, about the routine mistreatment of Indians in American history, he is not described as “anti-American.” Those who express horror about the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition are not labeled “anti-Christian” or “anti-Spanish.”

The same media that prohibits even the slightest criticism of Jews has no reluctance to demean other groups. White Southerners, Germans and Evangelical Christians - these groups get more than their share of ridicule and debasement. The portrayal of the slack-jawed, green-toothed, ignorant, racist, hateful, murderous, rural White Southerner has become a stereotype in Hollywood films. One of the best-selling books of the late 1990s is the media-promoted Hitler’s Willing Executioners,1 a book that says the German people have something evil within them, something that makes them all guilty for the atrocities of the Holocaust. In stark contrast, whenever Jews are mentioned as a group, it is always with a sort of a hushed reverence. What is it about the Jewish people that evokes such unrestrained adulation and visceral hatred?

Once I became convinced that race was important and that people of European descent needed to protect their heritage and culture, I became a young member of the Citizens Council. Often, after class and on rainy summer days, I would go down to the office on Carondolet Street in New Orleans to do volunteer work.

Many fascinating publications streamed into the office from hundreds of right-wing groups all over America. One day, when I finished helping with a Council mailing, I came across some tabloid newspapers called Common Sense. It was a conservative, right-wing paper modeled after Thomas Paine’s classic broadside; only the message was sharply different from Paine’s. “JEWISH-LED NAACP PART OF COMMUNIST PLAN FOR AMERICA!” read one issue’s headline. “COMMUNISM IS JEWISH!” trumpeted another. I also found some old issues. The huge headline in one of them predicted, “RED DICTATORSHIP BY 1954!” However, such a warning did not lend much credibility to the paper when looked at in 1965! I found the National Enquirer-type headlines ludicrous, but it was hard to resist reading something that scandalous, even if just to laugh at it.

rds of Mattie Smith

One of the regular volunteers, Mattie Smith, an elderly lady in a flower-print dress and outlandish hat, saw me snickering at the lurid headlines and simply said, “You know, it’s true.”

“Red Dictatorship by 1954?” I replied with a smile.

“No,” she said, “Communism is Jewish. They are the ones behind it.”

I thought I would humor the little old lady by politely arguing a bit with her. “Ma’am. How could that be?” I asked. “Communists are atheists; they don’t believe in God. Jews believe in God, so how could they be Communists?”

“Do you know who Herbert Aptheker is?” she said, answering my question with one of her own.

“No,” I replied, affecting nonchalance.

She was like a tightly coiled spring waiting for release. “He has the official role of chief theoretician of the Communist Party, USA, and he’s listed in the Who’s Who in World Jewry.1 Leon Trotsky, the Communist who took over Russia with Lenin, was in Who’s Who in American Jewry.2 His real name is Lev Bronstein. Both are atheist Communists, and both are proudly listed as great Jews in these books published by the largest Jewish organizations in the world.”

Meekly, I offered, “Maybe they were listed because they were once Jews.”

“You have so much to learn,” she said with a sigh. “Under Israel’s Law of Return, you can be an atheist Communist and still immigrate to Israel. There are plenty of them too. You only qualify to immigrate if you are a Jew, and a Jew is described simply as being of Jewish descent. So, you see, you can be Jewish and still be an atheist and still be a Communist - and I tell you, Communism is Jewish!”

“All Jews are Communists?” I retorted sarcastically.

“No, no, no,” she emphatically replied, with much patience in the way she paced her words. “All Jews are not Communists, any more than all snakes are poisonous. But most leading Communists in America are Jews, as well as most of the convicted Russian spies in America, as well as the leaders of the New Left. And historically, most of the Commie revolutionaries in Russia were Jewish as well!”