Trudy Gold
The Berne Trial: Protocols on Trial: Myth of World Jewish Conspiracy

Trudy Gold - The Berne Trial: Protocols on Trial Myth of the World Jewish Conspiracy

- Well, good evening, everyone. And in this course on Switzerland, what I’m going to talk about this evening is The Berne Trial, which is, of course, it’s the case where the Swiss National Front, the Swiss Nazi party, distributed “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and it was brought to court in a very famous trial. So that’s going to be the core of it. And it also gives me an opportunity to talk a little bit about Switzerland and to talk about The Protocols. And I just want to start with a quotation that I read today in one of the Jewish newspapers, and I think the tragedy, of course, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” And can we see the first slide, if you don’t mind, Hannah? “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is this infamous forgery that came out of Russia and talks about the Jewish power conspiracy. And I want to begin with this quotation from a headline in the “Tablet” magazine. “With the initial claims of the hospital story being debunked, all that is left is the eternal guilt and villainy of the Jewish people.” That was in “Tablet Today,” and one of the things that we have to grapple with. And tonight, of course, is the 31st of October, Halloween, but I thought it’s important to remind you, those of you particularly who live in England, that in 1290, on Tisha B'Av, the order of the expulsion of the Jews of Britain was given, and they had to be out by November the first, this was the last day, 733 years ago, that Jews could be in England because tomorrow is All Saints’ Day. So it’s quite an apt time. But something else I want to say, because I know what is going on in Gaza is absolutely uppermost in all of our minds, it’s just to say that we obviously pray for our families in Israel and our friends in Israel. We pray for peace in the Middle East.

Again, the Jewish people are tested, but the time for recrimination will be much later on. Now, my view is we pull together as a people, and I’m getting the feeling, certainly in Britain, that we are more united than we have ever been. So it’s almost like the boil has been lanced. On one level, we know exactly where we are. So before we can actually get onto The Protocols, I’m just going to give you a few comments on the Jews of Switzerland. Believe it or not, today, they’re the 10th largest community in Europe with 20,000 Jews mainly in Geneva, Zurich, and Basel. Mainly Ashkenazi, but there is a wonderful Sephardi shul. Now, the reason I decided not to look in depth at the history of the Jews of Switzerland is it’s the same litany. It’s similar to the rest of Christian Europe. In 1294, there was a blood libel in Bern. It led to executions and expulsions. In 1249, there was a pogrom in Zurich. In 1349, we were accused of poisoning the wells in the Black Death, and 600 Jews in Basel were burnt to death, plus 140 children were forcibly converted. They’re banished from the Swiss Cantons in 1620. They’re only allowed to reside in two villages from 1776 on. And it’s not until Napoleon that you have the beginnings of gradual rights. And in 1862, the Jewish community in Zurich was founded, the first synagogue built, and Jews were only really allowed to settle freely after 1866. And by 1920, the community reached the peak of 21,000. And as I said, this is how the world has changed since the war. It is the 10th largest Jewish community in Europe. And it was in Switzerland that you had this very famous trial. So I think it’s very worthwhile, particularly at this time, to actually talk about The Protocols. Now, Norman Cohn, he was a professor at Sussex University, he was a German Jew, he actually called them “The Warrant For Genocide.”

Now, this is the brilliant historian Steve Zipperstein who’s promised that he’s going to come and lecture, he’s writing a book on Philip Roth at the moment, and he’s promised to come and lecture on it. And this is what he wrote. “The rise of liberalism has provided Jews with the tools to des…” This is his summary of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” “The rise of liberalism had provided Jews with the tools to destroy institutions, the nobility and the church,” this is what The Protocols say, “The sanctity of marriage. Soon, they will take control of the world as part of a revenge plot dating back to the ascendancy of Christianity.” And of course, the text is narrated by a Jewish leader, and it announces Jewry’s triumph as imminent. And what they hope for, in “The Protocols,” it’s the meeting of the Elders of Zion in, according to one of the versions, they meet in a graveyard in Prague. “And the world is going to fall into this cunning elite who have plotted forever and are now fated to rule the world until the end of time.” Now, if I tell you that it has been translated into over 120 languages, it is common currency in the Arab world, it is common currency in South America, it is common currency in Russia, post-revolution, where Jews are seen as the spawn of communism, as they’re also seen as the spawn of capitalism, I’m beginning to think that the only hope we have of going back to that liberal world is people, Jews obviously, but people understand Jewish history. They understand where the poison actually comes from. I, personally, was terribly cross when the Pope called for a truce. Now, shall I tell you why I was so angry? Because the leader of the Catholic church, about 1000 years before, had said that there is the crime of malicide, but it’s not a crime because it’s the killing of Jews. And I know I’m angry, but I’m very angry when this kind of morality is taught by a church that has never, in my view, really come up with a proper explanation for its appalling anti-Judaism. Now, we know really where the, we know a lot as to where the forgery came from. But before that, I’m going to read you from Daniel Pipes.

“The great importance of "The Protocols” lies in permitting anti-Semites to reach beyond traditional circles and find a large international audience, a process that continues to this day. The vagueness, almost no names, or no dates, has been one the keys to this its success. Also that Jews use all the tools available, capitalism and communism, philo and antisemitism, democracy and tyranny, and even destruction of elements of its own people make it possible to…“ So, when I say destruction of its own people, tragically, I’m sure you all know that Abbasi’s PhD at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow was the link between Zionism and the Holocaust, which is pulped out of Russia into the Arab world. The sickening belief that the Zionists in Palestine colluded in the Shoah to have a state. Now that’s how bad. And as The Protocols are concerned, we are demons, we are capable of everything, anything to achieve our ends, which is total world domination. It makes it so that whether you are rich and poor, right or left, Christian or Muslim, American and Japanese, Jews always scheme, Jews are everywhere, Jews are behind every institution, the shadowy elders are behind everything. And of course, I don’t have to tell you that whenever there’s economic, social, and political instability. Look, antisemitism, you could say, is like any other racial prejudice, but it has much in common, but I think it goes further. And I think the problem which makes antisemitism a tool of other victim groups is they see us as perpetrators.

We are white European colonialists, we are the blind spot, we are the blind spot, both of the left and the victims, we are the blind spot quite often, of those who rule, and we’re also the blind spot at the left. So how do we deal? And my view is we deal by actually screaming for proper education. Let’s hope that people can be, if you like, modified in some way. But if we believe that strength is in education, let’s talk about it because we know a lot now where "The Protocols” actually come from. They’ve been debunked many times. And it was the work of two Englishmen, actually, Philip Graves, who was the uncle of the great Robert Graves, who of course wrote “I, Claudius,” and an English journalist called Lucian Wolf. And any scholar will now tell you that we know “The Protocols” are a forgery. Can we see the first slide please? Here you see Herman Goedsche. Now he went under the pseudonym, Sir John Retcliffe. He wrote a book called “Biarritz.” He was a violent anti-Semite, but he wrote in the genre of historical romance. And in his book, “Biarritz,” it has a chapter in the Jewish cemetery in Prague. It’s a secret nocturnal meeting according to Goedsche, of 13 Jews representing the 12 tribes and one Jew in exile, reporting on their plans to take over the world. And look at his dates. He’s living at a time, he worked for the Prussian Secret Service, he’s living at a time of huge political instability in Germany, Germany is not unified till 1871. He writes the book in the 1860s. He has imbibed all the antisemitism. The reality was Jews were under 1% of the population in Germany. And you have to ask, where does it come from? It comes from this 2000 year old tradition of hatred. It first appeared, this book, “Biarritz,” first appeared in pamphlet form, first in Germany, then in Russia, then in Paris, and then in Prague. And this chapter is constantly used by the anti-Semites as proof of “The Protocols.” It was in fact bought into Russia by a man called Rachkovsky, who I’m going to come onto a moment.

He was the head of the Okhrana in Paris, and it was his job to root out revolutionaries. So “The Protocols,” part of it comes from this sort of romance. The second, can we go on please? The other comes from Maurice Joly. Maurice Joly wrote a book, “The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu.” He was a French political writer, he was a satirist, and he was a lawyer. He attacked the regime of Napoleon III. And his book is actually a scathing attack on Napoleon, and he appears to have borrowed material from a popular novel by Eugene Sue, “The Mysteries of the People,” in which the plotters were Jesuits. So he talks about plotters and it’s transferred with Hermann Goedsche, into what becomes “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Now, let’s have a look at Rachkovsky, because he was one sinister character. He was head, now look at his dates, 1853 to 1910, what’s he up to? He’s chief of the Okhrana, the Russian Secret Service. He’s based in Paris between 1885 and 1902. Paris at the time of the Dreyfus affair. And by 1905, he’s head of the Okhrana. Russia is going through huge instability at the time. You’ve had the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, the ensuing pogroms, Alexander III on the throne, with his very reactionary attitude. And of course then it’s going to go to his son Nicholas II. By 1905, this arch reactionary, who wants to use the Jews to ward off revolution, revolution is bubbling in Russia. 1905, you have remember, the phoney revolution. Let’s use these Jews, these international conspirators, if I can prove that, he got a really good chance to make people believe.

And of course, Nicholas II swallowed it. When the empress was taken away at Yekaterinburg, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” was one of the books by her bedside. And the text is presented as the problem of an impending revolution as part of a global Jewish conspiracy. And thus, he thought this would be a way of deflecting from the real problems of Russia. And one of his agents was a woman called Glinka, who was the maid of honour to the wife of Alexander II, who was herself a violent antisemite. Now can we go on please? So Rachkovsky is also agitating. And now we come to a man called Pavel Krushevan, another reactionary living in Russia. Lenin referred to Reactionaries, by the way, as Krushevans, and Yiddish songs cited him as a modern oppressor of the Jews. And Steve Zipperstein in his brilliant book, “Pogrom,” actually thinks that he is the author of the most famous edition of “The Protocols.” And who was he? He was born to an impoverished noble family, he had little formal education, but he was very, very, very bright, which is ironic, he spent a lot of his life surrounded by Jews, he was in Kishinev. And in many of the shops and taverns in Kishinev, And he spent time in Odessa. Much of the taverns, many of the properties were owned by Jews and packed with labourers and peasants during the long winter months. he began to think that the Jews were somehow oppressing the peasantry. And after leaving, he worked as a clerk in Kishinev. He was hired by a newspaper. He was a hack reporting on crime. And gradually by the 1890s, he becomes a complete conservative. And then in 1897, the year of the Zionist Congress, he takes control of a struggling Kishinev Daily Paper called the Bessarabets, it was eight pages long.

And he’d already published a book, “What is Russia?” He travelled on trains, reporting on conversations, it made him quite a lot of money. He crisscrossed the pale. He looks at the beauty of the Russian countryside opposed to what he called the pollution of the Jews. So he’s a notorious anti-Semite. And then he begins to serialise his version of “The Protocols” in this paper, The Bessarabets. And not only that, he also published accusations of ritual murder. And that led Easter Sunday, April the sixth of 1903, to the infamous Kishinev Pogrom. And by that time he was in St. Petersburg. And it was in St. Petersburg that he released in nine serial editions, “The World Union of Free Nations and and Sages of Zion: Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Ultimate Conspiracy.” And this text was quite obscure until the Russian Revolution. In Krushevan’s version, he lays down the plans to take over the world, and they all swear on an oath to the golden calf, that emerges from the rabbi’s grave in the cemetery in Prague. Do you see? It’s gothic novel. They’re looking for the other, the other, the satanic other to blame. And of course, it was a wonderful tool for the extreme right, they were trying to hold Russia together. And not only that, as we’ve already discussed, many of the revolutionaries were Jewish. So consequently, they’re trying to subvert Russia. Now, obviously newspapers are perishable, they need a more lasting effect to make the document into a book.

And the book that emerged was written by a man called Sergei Nilus, he was the husband of of Yelena Ozerova, a lady in waiting to the empress, Alexandra. So do you see there’s connections with the highest at the Russian court. And don’t forget, at the Russian court, they were also terribly susceptible to mysticism, think Rasputin and all these strange cults, fantasy, the world is coming to an end, and with it is this appalling Jew hatred. Let’s have a look at Sergei Nilus, what a bunch of characters I’m showing you tonight. He was of Swedish descent, he was a minor aristocrat. He had a terribly mental collapse, he moves to Paris, he emerges as a religious fanatic, he’s obsessed with mysticism, and also the coming of the antichrist. He was totally anti-liberal, and against any constitutional reform. In Russia, there was an organisation called The Black Hundreds, they were the pogromists. Tsar Nicholas II was actually their president. And they were the ones who went into the pale screaming deaths of the Jews. And he published his version of “The Protocols.” It’s called “The Great Within the Small.” And it coincided with the 1905 revolution. So do you see how the perfect scapegoat had been formed? It must be said, even the reactionary Stolkian, chairman of the Council of Ministers declared it was a fraud and originated in France, but nevertheless, it still spread. And after the 1917 revolution, it sold millions of copies. Actually, under the Soviets, Nilus was arrested. And in Soviet Russia, possession of his book was a crime. So basically, you already have “The Protocols,” and I should mention to you that after the Russian Revolution, and after the war was over, the British, the French and the Americans committed troops to fight the Red Army, to work with the Whites. Now what happened was after Trotsky basically won, what happened, although we did lose a certain amount of land, but basically the Red Army prevailed.

Many of these soldiers were later repositioned to Palestine, and they brought with them “The Protocols of the Elders of the Zion” in their backpacks. And ironically, if you want to really get into depth into the origins of the troubles, it’s fascinating, these Christian-Muslim associations, which began to spew out antisemitism based on “The Protocols.” And I should mention to you, “The Protocols” were put on trial. What happened was, of course, in Germany, it led to the assassination of Walther Rathenau, the German-Jewish foreign minister, he was assassinated as an elder of Zion. And actually, the judge, who of course found the perpetrators guilty, the judge actually said it was one of the most evil documents. So you will already had a trial before you’ve had The Berne Trial. The point is, they still go on. There is no logic in it. But then at the moment, we’re not seeing much logic in the world. And the man who disseminated it, mainly in Germany, is a character called Theodor Fritsch. And it is his version that is going to be published by the Swiss National Front in Berne. So can we see Theodor Fritsch, please? Yes, he was the son of a farmer, he was born in a Prussian province. He actually was a tradesman, he studied at the Royal Trade Academy in Berlin, he graduated in 1875, employed in a Berlin machine shop. He gained independence in 1879, financial independence, because he founded a technical bureau associated with a publishing firm. He founded the Miller’s League and he began to publish “The German Miller.” Now I’m talking now about Germany post-unification, Bismarck’s great enterprise to make Germany into the greatest economic power in the world. And of course, you had incredible, incredible progress in industrialization, the railway networks, the development of the cities, think about department stores, think about all the tools of modernity. And even though the Jews were under 1% of the population, they had a high visibility profile. And this is a man, there are people in Germany who suffer from modernity. And the Jews were associated with modernity, be it to the left, be it to the right.

And in 1905, he founds the Saxon Small Business Association. He wants to protect the small craftsmen. He already created an early discussion forum called Anti-Semitic Correspondence. Don’t forget the term, anti-Semitism, was coined by a German journalist in 1879. And it means Jews, don’t ever think otherwise. And he said it was for Jew haters of various political persuasions. And in 1887, by the way, he sent an edition to Nietzsche, but he was totally dismissed. This is what Nietzsche replied, “To cast a glance at the muddle of the principles that lie at the heart of this strange movement, it just was too much for my patience.” Now he wrote in 1896, “City of the Future,” a paternalistic project for the Volk, the German Volk. And he had a publishing house and he publishes something called “The Hammer.” He was very much, he believed all the Nazi race theory, the theory that later became Nazi theory, he believed in the absolute superiority of the Aryans, he wanted to go back to peasant values, he hated urbanisation, he hated industrialization. In 1893, he wrote, “Handbook on the Jewish question,” and he called upon the German mob, never mixed your blood with that of the Jews. It was read by 6 million people. “The Riddle of the Jewish Success” is another one of his. Now the point is, it was his version of “The Protocols” that hit the Swiss National Front. So that is the one on trial. It’s another muddled version of these ideas that came out of Russia. Although probably just as much inspired by the events in Paris, the Dreyfus Affair. Now can we go on, please.

Debunked by the great Philip Graves, who was a journalist for the Times. The problem was when “The Protocols” hit Britain, The Times actually published an article, “Have We Escaped a Pax Germanica To Fall Under the Sway of a Pax Judaica?” But it was Philip Graves who managed through a lot of research to work out the origins of them and to publish in The Times, and The Times retracted. Can we go on please? Here you see Lucien Wolf, the British-Jewish journalist, but I have spoken about him before. But one of his main tasks was the debunking of “The Protocols.” However, he was violently anti-Zionist, He wanted to be an English gentleman, and you can see that from his cartoon. So let’s turn now to Berne and let’s turn to the trial. Can we see some? You see Berne in the 1930s, and this is where The Protocols are being disseminated by the Swiss National Front. Let’s have a look at their symbol. This is the Swiss National Front. They absolutely flourished in the 1930s. Yesterday, of course William talked about German Switzerland, and of course it was in German Switzerland, very much influenced by what’s going on in Nazi Germany, and in Germany prior to the Nazis that these ideas come through. Now at the height of the membership, according to the Swiss, there were 9,000 members. According to the Wiesenthal Centre, there were 25,000 members. And this sort of anti-Semitism actually begins amongst students at the Institute of Technology in Zurich. And now it’s fascinating, is it not? Why do we expect you students to be liberal? The vanguard of much of the appalling is against the state of Israel are actually coming from the student population. Let me state what I believe very, very strongly. Education does not lead to a moral compass. All you’ve got to do is study the level of education of the Nazis. What we have to think about, and never has it ever been more telling, we have to think about how we instil in our kids, some are lucky enough to have it in their homes, where kids actually do have a moral compass and they learn to think for themselves. If it can’t be done in the homes, it has to be done through schools. Look, it’s the only weapon we have. And it’s about time we start.

I remember the great late Robert Wistrich said to me, “The day will come when you will have to fight for liberalism.” And the trouble with liberalism, it is not militant, but just take in mind what Robert said. So anyway, it begins amongst the student groups. Various individuals, as happens usually with fascist groups, they all broke away from each other. They had a newspaper called “The Iron Groom.” But they also did something that most people who want to take away other people’s freedoms, they managed to get seats on the Zurich Municipal Council, and they managed to have someone in parliament. If you look at how groups work, how did Stalin manage to replace the brilliant Trotsky, Trotsky the intellectual? ‘Cause he understood the nature of power. He understood how to get onto, he became the General Secretary of the Party, and he put his people in place. We are seeing it happening in Britain actually, at this moment. If you look at people like how Jeremy Corbyn and his friends took power, they went to all those local boring meetings, they gradually did it through local government, and then into parliament. And there are 10 mayors in England who are Muslim, and there are many Muslims on council. I’m not saying that many of them aren’t good people who believe in Britain, but it’s interesting how people can take power. Now, just to tell you what happened to the Swiss National Front, The Berne Trial is going to actually announce that “The Protocols” are a forgery. And after The Berne Trial, the Swiss National Front becomes even more reactionary. They established a militia, they became very Nazi in Outlook. But then what William was talking about last night was Swiss independence. And in 1940, in fact, the leaders were put in jail because what had happened was they found out that the organisation had been receiving money from Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda and thus, violated Swiss independence.

So ironically, it came to nothing. But the point was, this is the organisation that is going to be brought to, it’s going to be brought to trial for disseminating “The Elders of Zion.” So along with our other publications, they’re publishing “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Can we go onto the next slide? They claimed that “The Protocols” were produced during the First Zionist Congress at Basel. They cited Rabbi Mordecai Ehrenpreis, I’m going to talk about it in a minute. He’d been at the conference and he was at Stockholm Synagogue, and they also cited Ahad Ha'am. Now what happens is that the Federation, two organisations, the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities and the Bernese Jewish community, sued the Swiss National Front for distributing anti-Jewish propaganda. And the trial, as I said, focuses on The Front’s use of “The Protocols of the Elders of the Zion.” So it kicks off in a meeting in the Berne Casino when the National Front distributes The Protocols. And it’s at this stage, these two organisations decide to bring “The Protocols,” to actually bring the people who disseminate “The Protocols” to trial and to prove, but more important to prove that “The Protocols” are a forgery and it’s going to last for two years. And who were the witnesses? Let’s have a look at the witnesses. Rabbi Mordecai Ehrenpreis. Now he was a fascinating character. He was born in Lviv. he was brought up in Yiddish culture. He studied though at German universities and at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentum in Berlin, which was the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies. It was a rabbinic seminary that had been founded in 1872 and survived up until the Nazis in ‘33. And Abraham Geiger, who of course was really responsible for the creation of Nonorthodox Judaism, was instrumental in its founding. And from 1884, he wrote for the Hebrew newspapers, Ha-Maggid and Ha-Meliz. he becomes a rabbi in Croatia.

And prior to Herzl, he was one of those few rabbis who defined the concept of a new national Judaism. This is very much, look at his dates, this is very much in response to the rise of nationalisms and the rise of antisemitism. Perhaps the Jews too are a people. Now what does it mean to be a Jew? If only people understood that muddle, I think there might be less obfuscation, because don’t forget, prior to the French Revolution, Jews would’ve seen themselves as a nation in exile. It was the French Revolution and then Napoleon, who said to the Jews as individuals, everything, to Israel as a nation, nothing. So the bulk of Jews in the West are citizens of the countries in which they live. They are British, they are French, they are German. But then you have the rise of antisemitism. And don’t forget Russia, where Jews never had that option, or for a very, very small sliver of time. So basically, you have these individuals who’d lived in many different places, this is the point, they’re mobile, they see what’s going on in the world, what could be the answer? And of course he, when Herzl erupts onto the scene, and I spoke about him last week, interesting, also in Switzerland. He was one of those who got in touch with him. He was a very important figure at the First Zionist Conference, but he lobbied for cultural Zionism, as opposed to political Zionism. But eventually he believed in bringing together those views. Cultural Zionism is such a rarefied wonderful idea, that Ahad Ha'am best summed it up. He said that out of Zion must come the spiritual cultural regeneration of the Jewish people, that will spread to the diaspora and allow us to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah and regenerate the world. This is the lovely, lovely dream. From 1900 to 1914, he was the Chief Rabbi of Sophia In Bulgaria. And then he becomes the rabbi of Stockholm. And from 1935, he was also a professor at Stockholm University. He wanted very much to synthesise general and Jewish culture.

He was a man who could walk many worlds. He was very active in helping Jews in trouble, sending aid to Poland and then to Nazi-occupied Europe. He was chair of the Swedish section of the World Jewish Congress. He was also involved by the way, in planning the Attempt of Wallenberg to rescue Hungarian Jewry. And the last meeting that Wallenberg had before he left for Budapest was actually at the home of Ehrenpreis. So he is being accused of being one of the writers of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” So he of course gives evidence. Now, let’s see who else gives evidence. Chaim Weizmann, the elder statesman of the Jewish world. He comes from London to, and remember, it’s already been debunked in England, to give evidence. And then a lot of money goes into this. A lot of Russians are called to debunk. And can we have a look at them? Here you have Sergei Svatikov, he was a Russian historian who presented critical evidence that “The Protocols” were a forgery. Another chap who I couldn’t find a picture of, Count Armand Alexandre du Chayla he was a French nobleman who converted to Russian orthodoxy. He’d been a journalist at the time of the Beilis trial, a blood libel trial in Russia. And he gave evidence about how the blood libel, how “The Protocols” were a complete forgery. Can we go on? This was very well researched. Here you have Vladimir Burtsev. He was a revolutionary, he was an activist, he was a scholar. He was a very important Russian thinker, editor of many Russian language periodicals. Under the czars, he’d been exiled to Siberia, he managed to escape to Switzerland. He founded a paper called Free Russia, then to England. But he was arrested and imprisoned for advocating the assassination of Nicholas II. And on his release, he went back to Switzerland, which he made his home.

He exposed various czarist agents as provocateurs. He was opposed to the Bolsheviks. He had put his hope in Kerensky. He was actually arrested on Trotsky’s orders. Was he the first political prisoner of the Soviet Union? It was actually Gorky, the great writer, Maxim Gorky, who pleaded for his release. He was a very important literary figure, and he left the Soviet Union and he became the chairman of the Russian National Committee. And he fought both fascism and antisemitism. He was a liberal, he was a really good man. And at The Berne Trial, he managed to expose the Okhrana’s complicity in “The Protocols.” Tragically he died in poverty in Paris in 1922. These are the people that are brought together with great knowledge of Russia, great knowledge of the Okhrana knowledge of the Beilis case, just to show what a load of hokum it all was. Can we go on please? Here you have Boris Nicolaevsky, he was a Marxist activist, he was a historian. He’d been part of the Menshevik faction. And after the revolution, he became head of the Marx Engels Institute. He’d been arrested by the Soviet police though, in 1921. And he was deported and stripped of citizenship. You see, Bolshevism would have no opposition. He settled in Berlin and he becomes one of the leading scholars of Soviet communism. And in June, 1933, he moves from Berlin to Paris to avoid the Nazis. And in fact, he was close to Trotsky’s son, Lev Sedov, who handed him Trotsky’s papers to store. Unfortunately was burgled a week later. He was the author of many books, and he gave evidence at the trial. That’s the point, he was one of the leading scholars of Russia.

And he could therefore give evidence that “The Protocols” was a completely bunked up job by Nilus, by Rachkovsky, by Krushevan, et cetera. So by the way, he actually made it to America, where he lectured at many American universities. And the Hoover Institute archive is where his archive is today housed. He was a very, very important figure. Can we go on please? This is Pavel Milyukov, he was another fascinating man. These are men who believed in righteousness. He was an upper class Russian who was a founder of the Kadet Party at the time of 1905, the Constitutional Democratic Party. And he had served as foreign minister in Kerensky’s provisional government. He didn’t want Russia to exit from World War I. Of course, he was anti-Bolshevik. He went to Turkey and then he went to Western Europe, where in 1921, like so many of these exiled Russians, he ended up in Paris where he edited the Russian language paper. And in March 22, Shabelsky-Bork, who was a Russian Nazi supporter, and he was involved in the early days in Munich, he attempted to assassinate him at the Berlin Philharmonic because he was so anti-Nazi. And he drove from Munich to do so. In fact, his life was saved by his friend Vladimir Nabokov, who attacked Bork, but died in the attempt. And of course, he was the father of the great writer. The people wanted to stop him because he was a great man of liberalism, a great man. He was kind of, to me, the gentile equivalent of is Isaiah Berlin. Let’s go on. Now, we see Max Bodenheimer. Now he was a Jew, he was born into an assimilated German family. He studied law, he’d been very close to David Wolffsohn, who was the second president of the Zionist organisation. And he’d established a Zionist group in Cologne. And he was very close to Herzl.

And at the first Zionist Congress, he was a member of the Inner Action Committee. He also accompanied Herzl to meet the Kaiser. And his evidence was basically that the First Zionist Congress had absolutely nothing to do, it had absolutely nothing to do with “The Protocols,” which were obviously a forgery. So let’s look at the next slide, please. So this is what the court had to decide, were “The Protocols” a forgery? Was it plagiarism? If it was, what was the source? Do “The Protocols” fall under the term, disgraceful literature? Now all of these points were actually proven. So in the case, actually, the court went for the plaintiffs and said, yes, it is disgraceful literature. And however, also what came out of The Berne Trial, the documents that came out of The Berne Trial, become incredibly important. However, what happened as a result of this was that even though they managed to prove it was a forgery, what happened was there was a fine, it was really just a fine. And then there was an appeal. So even though it found for the plaintiffs, nevertheless, they didn’t go to jail or anything like that, but “The Protocols” were fully debunked. Having said that, it doesn’t seem to make any difference because they still go on. And that is what is so extraordinary. And so what can I tell you? Another case that comes out of Switzerland, I thought it was important to talk about “The Protocols” tonight because of what’s going on at the moment. And we really must stay strong over all of this. I’ve left time for questions, I hope I haven’t gone too fast for you, but I think a lot of you know a lot of this. So let’s see what people want to say.

Q&A and Comments:

Yes, Rita’s telling us the slain soldiers are Staff Sergeant Roy Wolf and Sergeant Lavi Lipshitz, may they rest in peace.

Myrna says condolences.

Adrian says, the talks take my mind off the war.

Q: Patricia, could you explain what you mean by “The Protocols” being a forgery?

A: Well, they were made up, they didn’t exist. They purport to be a meeting of the elders of Zion who plot to take over the world. And it never happened, and it was made up, it’s the great anti-Semitic conspiracy. But it couldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for all that hatred that went before. For example, the blood libel, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is just another step in the line of huge Jew hatred.

Marion saying, in the past we had no voice, no power to speak up, but today we have a strong voice at last. We’re not friendless, I really want to emphasise that, we are definitely not friendless. And I’m having lots of conversations with non-Jewish friends who are absolutely furious with what’s going on in England. I think this could be a turning point because let’s be careful, let’s be very careful about what we say because there are very many moderate Muslims who have the right to live as we live. But unfortunately, what has happened is that the social contract has been broken. In the old days, when the Jews came to England, you lived by the rules of every society. But multiculturalism, it gave a different story, that everybody’s view was as good as everyone else’s. And you don’t even have to learn the language of the country in which you live. One of the things that really makes me angry when I get notices from the council I live in, it can be translated into 16 different languages, that makes me very angry. So what I’m saying is I have no problem with refugees, I have no problem with good people being part of society, and frankly, Britain’s been built on refugees. But what I am against is people who are disturbing the contract, the social contract that I find absolutely reprehensible. And I am fed up with the fact that my grandson can’t wear his blazer to school. I know that’s a silly thing to talk about, but that makes me cross.

What is so ironic is that 250 million Muslim extremists want to dominate the world, yet Jews, all 15 million of us, are accused of wanting that. How does it stop? Arlene, I think we got friends. I really do think we’ve got friends and also we’ve got to educate our own young people. They’re much brighter than we are in many ways. They worked through the universities, they’re spewed out. We never told our side of the story or we never told it loudly enough. We didn’t even teach Jewish history in Jewish schools. Our kids have no equipment. I know a lot of organisations are realising that now and working towards it. I’m not going to say it’s the only answer, there are many answers. And I’m not saying that I’m not going to bleed for the dead in Gaza, by the way, anytime a child, a woman, or an innocent person is killed, that is a shunra against the Almighty as far as I’m concerned. But I understand exactly why Israel’s done it, it’s got no choice. Having said that, it’s almost like I think the boil has finally been lanced. We’ve been worried about antisemitism for so long, we don’t have to pretend anymore, it’s here. How are we going to deal with it? And as a community, we’re coming together, and as I said, we are not friendless, there’s a lot of good people out there, and they are beginning to realise that their interests are not served by extremism.

Most people just want to live in peace. Do I really believe we can deprogram the world with education? I don’t think we can deprogram everyone, but I think we can start in the West. I find it offensive that students are screaming for Hamas, a terrorist organisation, I find that incredibly offensive. And now you get the problem with liberalism. I don’t believe in what you say, but I would defend to the death the right to say it. They are making us draw tight lines, and that makes me angry.

Trudy, did you see the anti-Israel tweets from Greta Thunberg incorporating the octopus, which figures in your first image representing the tentacles of Jewish world domination? She later unsuccessfully tried to remove the octopus. Are you shocked? Are you shocked by her? Come on. She’s got all the credentials, has she not? Could you mention Muslim-Christian associations? Yes, British army officers set up these associations, really, they were anti-Jewish, these are army officers on duty in Palestine after they had been de-mobbed from fighting the communists.

Q: Wasn’t Nietzsche’s mistress notoriously anti-Semitic?

A: Yes, Betty, she was, she was married to a really, really strange guy. But having said that, Nietzsche wasn’t, Nietzsche’s interesting. In fact, Robert Wistrich wrote a brilliant book on Nietzsche and the Jews, I must find the title for you. Elizabeth Foster Nietzsche was a supporter of the Nazi party. Yes, yes, of course, yeah. And she doctored a lot of his work. Oh, she was a Nazi and so was her husband.

He set up this very strange race colony in South America, Rita, very weird Aryan theories, but Nietzsche, no, Nietzsche’s something else. I’m writing a lesson on the history of antisemitism at the moment, which I plan to put out to schools. Can I discuss it with you, Trudy? Yes, of course you can.

Shelly, whose Zionist culture? Ashkenazi, Sephardi, religious Jews? Those who eat Gefilte fish? Those who brought egg plant to Italy? Oh, cultural Zionism, no, they were talking about, I don’t think they were actually talking about our customs, they were talking about the moral dream of the Jew. Yeah, that’s the point about Jewish culture. It’s so multi-leveled, isn’t it? Isn’t it? And as someone who’s mixed Sephardi and Ashkenazi, but more Ashkenazi than Sephardi, I’m actually going to come out with a preference, 'cause we need to lighten it, I much prefer Sephardi food. Michael, thank you.

Q: What is the role of the lawyer?

A: He was, oh my goodness, can you come back? That’s a long one, Ian, let me come back, thank you Rita.

Q: Please can you review who the plaintiffs were?

A: The plaintiffs were two Jewish organisations with the backing of a lot of people from all over the Jewish world like Weitzman.

Peter, I thought a forgery was an illegal copy. If “The Protocols” were made up, why call them, surely a fiction? Yeah, I think you’re right, Peter. I think you are right Peter, let’s call it a fiction. It’s just, we’ve called it a forgery for so long. You are right about the semantics, you are right.

Steven, it’s not the text as such, rather it’s the phenomenon, the insistence, the intent is in fact a false conspiracy. Yeah, because however much it’s gone to court, it still comes out as the world conspiracy, it’s absolute insanity, isn’t it? What was the year of the trial? It went on for two years between '33 and '35.

Rita, yeah, there are lots of organisations that are helping Israel, Michael. In fact, the lockdown through Carly and the Kirsh Foundation has prepared a whole list of organisations that need help at the moment. And they’ve all been vetted, so we know they’re safe. Rita’s saying not wearing a blazer is not a minor, it’s indication of not being safe in one’s own country. Yeah, yeah.

Q: Is there not a place for showing the antisemitic aspects of the Koran?

A: We are on pretty difficult water with that, if I may say, Gerald, because there are certain parts of the Talmud that are quite anti-Christian. I don’t know that we’ve made much progress through Jewish-Christian associations, Jewish-Muslim associations. To me, it’s bunches of nice middle class people getting together and not really getting to the grips with the underlying problem. In my view, and I’m speaking totally personally, we got to get a lot tougher. We do have a voice, but we must work together as Jews to get our message out. We must work with our non-Jewish partners and those in power to keep their support. In Toronto, we’re trying to do this through the UJIA federation. Yeah. We were taught to keep our heads down today, our kids are showing above the parapet. I hope so. It’s a safer place to be actually. Are the elders named? Oh, oh, no, but different times, but at times, Ahad Ha'am been named as one of the elders, you know that very gentle writer, he is named as one of the elders. One of the forgeries, or should I say, can I use the term forgery anymore? I shouldn’t, should I? in one of the versions they meet in a graveyard in Prague by a golden calf, it’s gothic novel rubbish, it’s weird. But you know, people like gothic horror, don’t they? They like mysteries.

Look, it’s Halloween tonight. Come on. Do you have any idea how pagan that is? Halloween? And that’s the day we were kicked out of England, as I said, not because of the night of the witches, but because of All Saints’ Day. In my view, the church has a huge debt to the Jewish people. And how are we going to get it from them? I don’t know. Not from nice talking anymore. It’s gone too far for that, It’s time for straight talking, I think. Anthony, education is vital in this area. We had three schools coming to our synagogue to learn about Jews, all three have cancelled.

How do we get the message through? Well, it’s interesting. There are certain schools in Britain where very good heads have been making statements. And through a colleague of mine, I’m getting in touch with the Ministry of Education. There has to be a directive to schools, there has to be a directive that comes from the government. Let’s start using that influence we are accused of having. Israel’s ambassador to the UN yesterday wore a yellow star, he’s going to continue wearing it until Hamas is defeated. What do you think about creating a movement? You know something, Sarah, I read, let’s not get too emotional about this, because I read an article from the Yad Vashem, and they are very uneasy about almost using the Shoah. Now I’ve got to think this through, I’m not sure where I stand on this. I’m really not sure where I stand. It could be used against us, I’m not sure. Don’t forget how our enemies on the extreme left and the Muslim extremes, they go as far as to say that the Shoah was part of a Jewish plot, they’ve gone that far, that we actually wanted our weak elements to die so we could create the state. Most of this rubbish came out of Russia, by the way, after Stalin realised that he wasn’t going to have, although at first Stalin had supported Israel, of course he did, it was a left wing state. He’s not going to support the feudal Arab monarchies. But then Golda visits Russia, there’s a problem because a lot of Jews came out to greet her and then gradually, and then you begin to see Zionism being equated with cosmopolitanism and Trotskyism. It gets worse under Khrushchev, particularly as the Arab regimes change. And then all this bilge comes out in the Arab world, not just from the communists in Russia and the Zionology department, but also from the Nazis.

Have you any idea how many Nazis were working in Egypt and Syria at the end of the second World War? It’s a fascinating topic. A man called Liaz, who had worked for Goebbels was a brilliant propagandist, an evil man, he converted to Islam. He was brought out by Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was the leader of the Palestinian Arabs. So there’s a lot of, hmm, it’s problematic. Thank you.

Q: Can you comment on the endemic nature of anti-Semitism in the academic environment?

A: I think it’s got an awful lot to do with the traditional liberal left, actually, the left and liberalism that somehow we are on the side. I can talk about England, there’s amongst a lot of left wing academics, they feel we owe a debt to the emerging, we owe a debt because of slavery, we owe a debt because we were white colonials. And consequently, we are always on the sides of the underdog. The problem is the Jews are not seen as the underdog. There’s been a slight of hand. You see, we are not typical refugees in inverted commas. What do we do when we get to a country? We have that restless gene, we have to try and succeed. So when a million Jews were kicked out of the Arab world, what happened to them? They didn’t sit in refugee camps on the Egyptian and Syrian border.

Now, I want to be careful here because there is a case, the Palestinians have been treated appallingly, but unfortunately much of that treatment was from their own people. Never forget that there could have been a Palestinian state in 1947, ‘48, what happened? The Arabs invaded, but Egypt took Gaza and closed the border. And Abdullah of Jordan took the West Bank and set up refugee camps. He didn’t allow them to integrate into what after all had been part of the Palestine mandate. So it’s an incredibly complicated tale, the tale of the Middle East. And it takes a lot of unpacking and very few people know enough about it. And that’s what we’re up against. So basically the Jews are seen as white oppressors, the fact that there are Jews of every shade of colour in Israel is irrelevant. We are white oppressors, we are successful, so we cannot possibly be the underdog. So in this kind of anti-imperialism, we are on the wrong side, we are with America, we are the evil ones. So look, how you get to people with closed mindsets is a very complicated story. All we’ve got is education. At least, let’s begin with our own kids, that’s what I’m saying to you. Let’s tell our story to our children so they don’t feel scared anymore. I am fed up with this, with our kids being scared, I’m fed up with friends and the stories that I’m hearing. Of course, our main concern must be for Israel and what’s happening there. And this is something else I think that the world doesn’t quite understand, what is the link that binds us all?

And Monty’s saying, there’s a controversial video on YouTube by Tami Ben Tor called “Dear Hamas.”

Oh, this is from Karen, she’s liking it, thank goodness. Agreed, Trudy, my late husband was a Sephardi and I’m Ashkenazi, his mother’s food was outstanding. We live in British Columbia and today our prime minister announced that the Shoa will be taught in schools as a compulsory subject.

Great Barry, but it’s not the Shoa that needs to be taught it’s Jewish history. They can’t just see the Jews as victims, they don’t know who the Jews are. Push for that, Barry, it’s not enough, it’s failed. The teaching of the Holocaust has failed. If the teaching, I was on the task force, I was an IRA, I represented Britain. But one of the purposes laid down in the Stockholm Declaration was to lessen antisemitism, it has failed, it’s not fit for purpose. A forgery is either the false making of material alteration, which is intent to defraud, thanks for that.

Thanks for that, Fiona.

Marian said she wore the yellow star during the Soviet campaign, and I think ordinary Christians respected it. Big controversy in Israel about the star of David worn at the UN by those representing Israel. It is a big controversy, isn’t it, Monty? Okay. The first place to use, the director is Jewish, not anymore, Lord Grade is no longer the director of the BBC. I’ve already heard denials that 7/10 never happened, the Jews made up, oh yes, yes, yes, of course, that’s being made up, of course.

Refugee camps in as our cities by now, why do we call them camps? Can we start talking about semantics? Yes, you are probably right.

Yes, yes, Rochelle, yes, the world has been poisoned. No, but Nietzsche, Marcel, no, I never said Nietzsche was an anti-Semite, he’s definitely not, but his sister was and his brother-in-law. Nietzsche’s a fascinating, complicated character. And we have had lectures on him, you can get them on our website. In 1948, the Arab leadership would not agree to any solution, so we got our state.

Q: What’s the Arab problem?

A: Look, Israel was always the unifying cap factor, it’s a very complicated story. Should we read “The Protocols?” No, in most source books, you can get extracts from them. The Rabbi speech from Biarritz is more juicy. No, our kids don’t need to read them. I think at a certain age, maybe, at university level, When the trial took place more recently, did that make any difference to the protocol? No, no, Elizabeth.

And anyway, Monty’s saying, he’s against wearing of the star of David, it’s specific to the Shoa. Anyway, everyone, look, I wish you all well, look, don’t forget, the boil has now been lanced, We know where we are and we are. Look, I remember Robert Wistrich, who was the world expert on antisemitism. And unfortunately he died in 2014, he said this was going to happen, and people thought he was a scaremonger. But he did say in our last conversation, he said, never forget, there is a spiritual destiny of the Jewish people. And I do believe that. I don’t know if that’s any comfort to any of you, but just know that, and Wendy and I talked about this last night, that lockdown is important to all of us, and we are trying to balance between history and culture and dealing with the issues. So bear with us and keep in touch and all keep together and keep strong. We will prevail, we always have, never forget that, despite the appalling cost, we are still here. What was it? Even Churchill said, we are one of the most remarkable races that ever walked the world, the Greeks and the Jews. Well, the ancient Greeks aren’t here anymore, but the Jews are, we’re still here and we’re still fighting and we’re still still trying to change the world for the better, I believe that. So God bless everyone. I’m sorry I’ve gone from, I’ve always tried to teach objective history. I think I haven’t tonight, I apologise for that, but I think there comes a time where you have to say where you are. Take care, everyone. Hannah, thank you so much, God bless.