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No. 34. | Vienna, 24th August 1900. | Fourth Year

The Fourth Zionist Congress.

Speech of Dr. Nordau.

Honoured Assembly!

Since we created the institution of summing up the experiences of the Jewish people year by year at our Congress in a brief survey, its history has unrolled itself before our eyes like an antique tragedy, wherein from act to act the horror grows and the catastrophes overtop one another.

From year to year the misery of our race undergoes a ghastly aggravation, and without our knowing it, assuredly without our willing it, the Book of Job, with its sombre Old Testament grandeur, has become the model for our yearly reports upon the condition of the Jewish people.

The year since the last Zionist Congress is the worst upon which I have hitherto had to report. Anti-Semitism, which, according to the smiling assurances of the communal heads of the Jewish people, was to be an ugly but passing fashion of the day, is spreading over the whole globe like a forest fire, which rages the more furiously the greater the extent it gains.

It lays waste one country after another, and imperils the Jews even there where they deemed themselves most secure. It assumes forms which the most embittered pessimism would not have held possible. All the spectres of the Middle Ages rise from their graves and walk abroad in the broad light of day. Even the hideous blood-fable is again believed by wide circles of the people, and goads them into an excitement which gravely endangers the property and the lives of the Jews. The cases of Tisza-Eszlar and Xanten were warnings which had been forgotten again. Polna and Konitz are marrow-shaking calls of admonition, against which the Jewish people dare not close its ears. In Bohemia a Jew was actually condemned to death for ritual murder, as four hundred years ago (cries of shame), and in Czech districts the Jews are met in the street with the gesture of throat-cutting. (Cries of shame.) In West Prussia and Pomerania Jews find themselves compelled to remove from places where their forefathers have been settled for generations, because their fellow-citizens pursue them, as members of a sect of murderers, with abuse and violence.

In Austria the Polna death-sentence was quashed and a new trial appointed. In Prussia the public authorities set themselves sharply against the excesses of the mob and upheld order with an iron fist. In both States the Governments have fully done their duty, and have not suffered acts of violence to be committed upon their Jewish subjects. In Prussia especially there was unfolded in the highest quarter so proud, so magnanimous a conception of the tasks of a father of his country (stormy applause and clapping of hands) that the Jewish people is thereby moved to the deepest gratitude. (Renewed long-continued applause.) But this intervention of the authorities on behalf of the sorely threatened Jews has not bettered their position; rather has it worsened it. The mob was not permitted to give the rein to its hatred. It had to hold in its fury. But in its heart it sets down this constraint to the Jews as a new guilt, and thirsts for the opportunity to repay it to them along with all the rest. In these districts the Jews have literally become protected Jews of the Government once more, and depend upon the good-will of the authorities in a measure in which no other part of the population depends. One is startled at the thought of what would happen if by any act or omission they were to forfeit the favour of the powers above them, or if a party were to come to the helm which cared more for popularity than for justice. On the day when the authorities