No, We Are Not a Chosen People

One of our greatest sins in the eyes of the Jewish bourgeoisie has been that in the course of the thirty-five years of our existence as a party we have not ceased to defend the simple idea that we, Jews, are not a chosen people, neither in the positive nor in the negative sense of the word, but a people just like any other nation, and that even though our history and the social-economic circumstances of our lives are unique, the same rules apply to us that regulate the lives of all other nations in the world. Our Jewish bourgeois opponents are especially enraged by our claim that there is a certain kind of Jewish nationalism that is just as ugly, just as disgusting as the nationalism of the other nations; and if Jewish nationalism, as a general rule, is not bloodthirsty, this is only out of necessity, not virtue; if an appropriate opportunity arose, Jewish nationalism would show its sharp teeth and nails no less than the nationalisms of other nations.

We live in times of mercilessly sharp contours. There is no place for halftones today. We live in a time of nationalistic bacchanalia. The high priests of nationalism in the holy temples of the capitalist world are preachers like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. In times like this, nationalism as such has been stripped naked and Jewish nationalism, too, has to show the world the ugliness of its face.

We need not talk much about Hitler’s relationship to Poland. It should be enough to quote one of the favorite songs of the Hitlerite gangs beginning with the words, “we will beat all Poles to death and spread them like butter on bread.”

What Hitler’s rise to power means for Poland’s state interests is a topic not worth wasting words upon. Eliminating the “Corridor,” taking away from Poland its part of Upper Silesia, occupying Danzig—these are the first items on Hitler’s program in the area of international politics; turning Poland into a German colony, into a “hinterland” of Germany—this is one of the subsequent points of the program.

One would think that Hitler’s rise to power would make every “patriotic” heart in Poland shiver with fear, and especially the National Democratic [Endek] heart. After all, it was the National Democratic Party that always defended the idea that Poland has no greater enemy than Germany. In their fight against the “German enemy” they were even willing to make peace with the much hated Soviet Union.

We have written on more than one occasion about how the Endek’s pope, Roman Dmowski, reacted to Hitler’s rise to power, and how the ND’s official organ, the Gazeta Warszawska, reacts to it every day. But it would be a crime not to make note of the voice of the most openhearted and shameless member of the Endeks—Adolf Nowaczynski. What we have in mind is his latest article about [Josef] Goebbels.

Nowaczynski’s article is a real hymn to Goebbels. The heart of the National Democratic camp’s greatest cynic has begun to tremble with “pure” passion for the greatest cynic and bloodhound among all the cynics and bloodhounds surrounding Adolf Hitler: “He is not just one of the most interesting personalities—he is literally an extraordinarily agreeable person,” exclaims with wonderment the Polish Goebbels.

“The Nazis are,” explains Nowaczynski, “according to their program first and foremost anti-Jewish, and only secondarily anti-universal. They are 60 percent anti-Jewish, and due to the crazy and reckless stubbornness of revengeful world Jewry they managed to imbue all 90 million Germans in the world with the hatred of Jews.”

This is what the spiritual countenance of Polish nationalism looks like in the infernal light of the Hitler-fire. And a similar formation has appeared on the Jewish street, too.

Not long ago we reported about a lecture held by a great revisionist on Hitlerism. The Hitlerite press concluded that “the whole lecture was not an accusation but a splendid defense of Hitler.” We quoted an excerpt from an expressly Hitlerist article in [Vladimir] Jabotinsky’s organ in Palestine. In it, one of Jabotinsky’s adjutants complains about the “furor that has been raised recently by the Jewish public against National Socialism.” [ . . . ] This revisionist hooligan “concludes” that Hitlerite Germany has not done “so much evil” to Jews as the Soviet Union, and he “cautions” the Jewish public not to discard the valuable, precious “anti-Marxist seed” of Hitlerism together with its antisemitic “skin.”

To be sure, Jabotinsky is nothing more than a small-scale Hitler, a fascist clown. But this clown has devoured a significant portion, if not the majority of our very own [heymish] Zionism. The fascist hooliganism that Jabotinsky preaches suits the mood that enveloped a significant portion of the Jewish bourgeoisie and especially bourgeois Jewish youth. Of course, Jabotinsky’s brown-shirt soldiers are nothing more than a tragicomic caricature of Hitler’s SA people. But the only thing missing in order for them to become the same beasts is some muscle strength, some territory, and a political opportunity. In Berlin they have actually “bravely” joined the lines of the real brown-shirt bandits. And in Palestine, too, they have demonstrated that they are not weaklings.

No, we are not a chosen people. Our nationalism is just as ugly, just as harmful, and has the same inclination to fascist debauchery as the nationalisms of all the other nations.