Binjamin W. Segel. _A Lie and a Libel: The History of
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion_. Translated and
edited by Richard S. Levy.
REVIEWED BY NILS ROEMER
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Binjamin W. Segel. _A Lie and a Libel: The History of the
Protocols
of the Elders of Zion_. Translated and edited by Richard S.
Levy.
Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Pp.
148.
Cloth $22.50. ISBN 0-8032-4243-3.
The _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_, one of the most
(in-)famous anti-Semitic forgeries, which allegedly revealed the
existence of an international Jewish-Masonic conspiracy for
world domination, was published under many different titles
and in various forms. First published in Tsarist Russia at
the turn of the century, the _Protocols_ are essentially a
patchwork composed of Maurice Joly's _Dialogue between
Machiavelli and Montesquieu in Hell_ (1864) and Hermann
Goedsche's _Biarritz_, published in 1868 (85-86).
Binjamin W. Segel, who was born in 1866 in Galicia, spent most of
his career writing for the _Centralverein deutscher
Staatsbuerger juedischen Glaubens_ (Central Union of German
Citizens of Jewish Faith), which was founded in 1893 to
safeguard Jewish civil and social equality against rising
anti-Semitism. He published not only _Die Protokolle der
Weisen von Zion, kritisch beleuchtet: Eine Erledigung
_(1924), but also an earlier study of Bolshevism and the Jewish
question in Romania and Eastern Europe before he died in 1931.
Though a few critical treatments of the _Protocols_ had appeared
(by Joseph Stanjek, Philipp Graves, and Hermann Strack [65])
prior to Segel's study, Segel was prompted by the continuous
effects of the _Protocols_ on political life in Germany.
Accordingly, he prepared an abbreviated version of his
earlier studies on the _Protocols_ entitled _Welt-Krieg,
Welt-Revolution, Welt-Verschwoerung, Welt-Ober- regierung_
(1926). This shortened version, translated and edited here by
Richard S. Levy, provides not only a detailed analysis of the
various sources of the _Protocols_, but also of their
immediate impact.
Between their concoction in Paris in 1897-1898 and the
revolutionary events of 1905, the still-unpublished
_Protocols_ did not attract much attention. Without the Russian
Revolution of 1917 and Germany's defeat in in the First World
War, the _Protocols_ hardly would have become so successful.
Seen as a blueprint for world conquest by Jews, the
_Protocols_ were widely circulated during the Russian Civil War
by propagandists seeking to incite the masses against the "Jewish
Revolution." In Germany the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, together
with the Treaty of Versailles and the legend of the "stab in
the back" (_Dolchstoss_), gave the _Protocols_ a particular
revival. The documents initially surfaced in Germany in an
edition by Ludwig Mueller under the pseudonym Gottfried zur
Beek. For Segel, the _Protocols_ confirmed for the
lower-middle-class parties, organiza- tions, and paramilitary
groups everything they believed about the Jews. Segel
explained the sponsorship of the _Protocols_ by Prince Otto zu
Salm-Horstmar, General Erich Ludendorff, and the Pan-German
League out of their political interests in the Weimar Republic.
Here Segel acutely touched upon the political function of the
_Protocols_; they exonerated Germany in its defeat in the First
World War and were a most effective weapon against the
"Jew-Republic" (61, 64-5).
With the distribution of the _Protocols_ in Europe, the
Americas, and the Muslim world, Segel's study and Levy's
introduction remind us of the international, cross-cultural
aspect of modern anti-Semitism, which unfortunately is not
limited to a specific culture, nation, or social group. It is
therefore particularly difficult to detect the direct impact
of the _Protocols_ on anti-Jewish prejudices and politics.
If Norman Cohen in his seminal study on the _Protocols_ called
them a "Warrant for Genocide," then it can be assumed that the
_Protocols_ imbued Germans not only with a particular
phantasmagoric interpretation of the power of Jews but also that
they had a direct bearing on the actual annihilation of European
Jewry. In contrast to this, Levy persuasively argues that the
"true harm of the Protocols lay not in its questionable
capacity to stimulate direct action but rather in its
encouragement of inaction" (Intro, 32).
While several more recent studies on the history of the
_Protocols_ by Norman Cohen, Jacob Katz, and Johannes Rogalla
provide us with more detailed and comprehensive histories of
this work, it becomes all too easy to forget the profound
insight Segel gained into the nature of the _Protocols_. By
comparing various versions and uncovering original sources,
Segel exposed the _Protocols_ as a forgery. That this
endeavor was not merely motivated by scholarly intentions but
also by the threat that the _Protocols'_ dissemination
posed to the social and political status of European Jewry is
evident in the concluding lines of Segel's study. He wrote that
unless the _Protocols_ were revealed as a forgery, they would
"...continue to befog the understanding of simple men, poison
their hearts, and pervert the common sense for decades,
perhaps for centuries to come" (118). Although Segel exposed
the _Protocols_ as fraudulent, they continued to be a powerful
anti-Semitic source. As Levy points out, the _Protocols_,
as a result of their lack of specificity, remained extremely
malleable and infinitely adaptable (Intro, 13). Although
Segel's text does not contribute much to furthering our
understanding of the history of the _Protocols_, Levy's
solid introduction and "Chronology of the Protocols" provide an
instructive survey both of modern anti-Semitism and of the
_Protocols_ themselves. Together with Segel's study and an
excerpt from the _Protocols_, this publication offers a compact
introduction into the study of one seminal anti-Semitic text
and its history.
Nils Roemer Columbia
University
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