College and Research Libraries


Anti-Semitica at Ohio State University 

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY has 
recently purchased a valuable collection 
of books on anti-semitism. Most of the 
material deals with or has reference to 
French anti-semitism, though there are 
some items dealing with other countries. 
The 251 items in this collection range in 
date from 1841 to the present. There is 
material on pre-World War I French 
anti-semitism, as well as material on anti-
semitism during the post-World War I 
decades and the German occupation of 
France during World War II. This short 
article will attempt to indicate a few of 
the important items which are repre-
sentative of the type of material to be 
found in this collection. 

An early example of French anti-semi-
tism is Alphone Toussenel, Les ]uifs~ rois 
de l' epoque (Paris, 1845). This is one of 
the first French anti-semitic books of 
modern times. It represents the views of 
a former Fourier socialist, nature writer, 
and hater of urban life. It expressed the 
views of a rural anti-semitism and was 
probably the most influential anti-semitic 
book published in France before the 
writings of Edouard Drumont. Dru-
mont, the leading pre-World War I anti-
semitic journalist in France, is represent-
ed in this collection by many books. Of 
special interest is an enlarged edition of 
his most notorious work, La France ]ui-
vre (Paris, 1885), which contains many 
illustrations derogatory to Jewish life. 
There are many other examples of Dru-
mont's anti-Jewish works in this collec-
tion, as well as several books about him. 
An example of a book favorable to him 
is George Bernanos' La Grand peur des 
bien-pensants (Paris, 1931). This work 
is an admiring biography of Drumont 
by a famous French stylist and sometime 
member of the Action Fran~aise. Charles 

JULY 1963 

BY GEORGE P. SCHOYER 

Mr. Schoyer is a staff member in the his-
tory and political science library~ Ohio State 
University. 

Renault's L' Israelite Edouard Drumont 
(Paris, 1896) is an attack on Drumont 

for not being, strangely enough, suf-
ficiently anti-semitic. 

Leon Daudet, the very influential writ-
er for the Action Fran~aise is represented 
in this collection by Au Temps de judas 
(Paris, 1933), which is an account of the 

period 1890-1900 and is full of bitter 
attacks on many of the leading person-
alities of the period. Another interesting 
book dealing with the same period is 
Philippe Sa pin's L' Indicateur Israelite 
(Lyon, 1897), which listed all Jewish 

families in France, town by town. It was 
apparently written for a pogrom that 
never took place. 

The collection contains many editions 
in several languages of the hoax known 
as the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion. 
The Protocols were largely based on 
Maurice Joly's Dialogue aux enfers en-
tre Machiavel et Montesquieu (Brussels, 
1868). This book, also part of the collec-
tion, is a satire on Napoleon III's gov-
ernment, originally written in 1865. The 
parallels between it and the Protocols 
are, however, so close that a large part 
of the Protocols must have been derived 
from Joly's book. Albert Asseo in Dia-
logues sur les temps nouveaux (Paris, 
1937) shows that the Protocols were in-
deed forged from Joly's book by two 
Russian officers, one of whom, Gen. 
Ratchkovsky, was the head of the Rus-
sian Secret Police in Paris at the time 
Joly's book was published. As a footnote 
to this discussion, Asseo's book was fatal 
to its author, who was searched out and 
deported by the Nazis after the fall of 

335 



France. John Gwyer's Portraits of Mean 
Men: A Short History of the Protocols of 
the Elders of Zion (London, 1938) is a 
complete history of the Protocols and 
their forgery. 

There are several volumes in the col-
lection which were published just prior 
to or during the German occupation of 
France. Examples of ~hese works are 
L. F. Celine's rabid Bagatelles pour une · 
massacre (Paris, 1938) and his equally 
violent L' Ecole des Cadavres (Paris, 
1948), a book that may have suggested 
the idea of death camps to Hitler. There 
are also two examples of French collab-
orationist radio addresses during the 
German occupation, Philippe Henriott's, 
l ci., Radio-France (Paris, 1943), and Jean 
Herold-Pacquis' L' Angleterre comme 
Carthage (Paris, 1944). Johannes Oester-
reicher, Racisme, antisemitism, anti-
christianism (Paris, 1940) was the last anti-
anti-semitic book published in France 
before the Nazi invasion. This book is 

MALC. 

(Contint{ed from page 334) 

tious, personable optimism. His audience 
retired for the evening reinforced in its 
belief that all old architecture is not bad 
nor is all new architecture good. 

Saturday was spent at St. Louis Uni-
versity some thirty blocks due east of 
WU through beautiful Forest Park. Two 
large discussions occupied the morning 
hours. The first, led by Donald Oehlerts 
of Colorado State University, concerned 
"Centralized Processing for College Li-
braries," a topic which he was well pre-
pared to present, having recently com-
pleted a study of opportunities for inter-
institutional library cooperation in his 
home state. The second was guided by 
Daniel P. Bergen of St. Benedict's Col-
lege, Kansas, and was designated "Col-

quite rare since the Nazis destroyed most 
of the copies. 

Still another volume that listed Jewish 
families and was used against them was 
the Weimarer H istorische-Genealoges 
Taschenbuch (Munich, 1913). It is an 
anti-semitic directory for pogrom pur-
poses of all leading Jewish families not 
only in Germany but throughout the 
rest of Europe as well. In spite of its 
early publication date, the Nazis appar-
ently used it to round up squads for 
death camps. Its detailed tracings of 
Jewish families and their ancestors, as 
well as anyone else in any way related to 
Judaism, make this work one of the most 
terrible books ever published. 

These are some of the interesting 
works in this collection of anti-semitica, 
and there are many others equally as val-
uable. There are many books illustrated 
with anti-Jewish cartoons and jokes, 
most · of them repulsive. The student of 
French and European social history 
should find this a valuable collection. • • 

lege Environment and the College Li-
brary." Many of Mr. Bergen's pregnant 
and provocative ideas may be gleaned 
from one paper which he published in 
this journal in November and another 
which appears in the present issue. At 
noon ACRL Executive Secretary Joseph 
Reason spoke to lunching conferees at 
the Coronado Hotel on "Experiences of 
an American Librarian in Burma," 
where he had spent 1961/62 for the As-
sociation and the Ford Foundation. 

A note must be made of the weather. 
It was the finest kind of spring in St. 
Louis on April 5-6, and it appeared that 
everything that could bloom during the 
two days did so. MALC has not always 
been so fortunate.-D.K. • • 

336 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES