Russian President Putin got my attention when he recently suggested that Jews with Russian citizenship might have interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“Maybe they’re not even Russians,” he said. “Maybe they’re Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship – even that needs to be checked.”
Putin reminded me why my great-grandparents made the harrowing journey from Russia and the Ukraine to the United States. My ancestors weren’t the only ones. Between 1881 and 1924, more than 2.5 million East European Jews sought to escape relentless persecution and ghettoization. That slice of history was captured in the movie “Fiddler on the Roof,” but while Hollywood entertained, it didn’t fully show the history of anti-Semitism in Russia and Eastern Europe or its ongoing ripple effect.
Deborah LevineAmericans are familiar with Hitler’s autobiography, “Mein Kampf,” his anti-Semitic manifesto that ultimately led to the Holocaust. “If it was on German bookshelves, you knew their Nazi affiliation,” said my father, a U.S. military intelligence officer assigned to interrogate Nazi prisoners of war. Less well known is that Hitler found fuel for “Mein Kampf’ in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an infamous Russian publication at the turn of the 20th century. The Protocols fabricated a secret Jewish conspiracy for world domination, and although disproved, The Protocols are referenced on hundreds of thousands of internet sites to this day.
Putin’s words echo those conspiracy theories, but the hate doesn’t stop there. A British newspaper reports that authorities will now investigate whether the 1918 killing of Tsar Nicholas II by a firing squad was in reality a “ritual murder.” The investigation is prompted by comments by a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church who is reputed to be Putin’s confessor. The term “ritual murder,” which dates back to the Middle Ages, is a theory that Jewish Passover food involved Christian blood. While the Russian Orthodox Church is being cautious about proceeding with this investigation, aware that it could spur a dangerous ultranationalism, the possibility of such an investigation should serve as a warning that anti-Semitic rhetoric is increasingly tolerated.