Customer Reviews

The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank) 1894-1915

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The author credits himself with writing a type of history which is complete and fully in the context of broader events. But somehow he manages to miss some of the larger ramifications of the very events he is describing in this book. He seems to be attempting to minimize the impact that these three infamous trials had on Jewish and wider history before and after the turn of the last century.

Most historians realize that the Dreyfus Affair had such profound effect on European Jewry that it served as an impetus for the ongoing Zionist migration to Palestine at the time. Theodore Herzl was a journalist at the time who was so profoundly affected by what he saw in France during the Dreyfus Affair that he founded the first Zionist congress in 1897 in Basle, Switzerland as a direct result. This, of course, has had significant impact on world history. But Lindemann pretends that life simply went on its merry way for Jews in Europe afterwards.

And in the United States, Lindemann has a similar blind spot regarding the historic significance of the lynching of Leo Frank. After bending over backwards to suggest that the prosecutor, the press, and even the enraged mobs were not driven by anti-Semitism in this case, he tops it off by missing the largest single lesson of the entire ugly affair. In the immediate aftermath of the brutal lynching of Leo Frank, the Ku Klux Klan was revived and vastly outgrew its former incarnation. Many well-known leading citizens of Georgia (including then current, former and future members of the Georgia House of Representatives) formed what they called the Knights of Mary Phagan (named after the girl who's murder was falsely attributed to Leo Frank). The lynching party grew from this group, many of whom gathered at night several weeks later on top of Stone Mountain (east of Atlanta) to burn a huge cross and form the KKK. But none of this is mentioned by Lindemann, the 'historian'.

Lindemann (a.k.a., Al Shirk) also wrote a book with the provocative title of "Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews" (1997). Robert Wistrich, one of the world's leading authorities on the history of anti-Semitism, characterized it as a "deeply pernicious book"..."which is marked not only by sympathy for the arguments of anti-Semites but by an undisguised antipathy toward Judaism and Jews."

I wrote an extended essay called "The Ever Approaching Thunder" on this book and on The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town.

Simply, The Jew Accused is an anti-Semitic account of anti-Semitic events.

Here is an excerpt from my paper:

That Lindemann provides Jewish people with agency and that he does not focus on them as purely victims is, of course, important and accurate. Likewise, trying to find other factors that contributed to Dreyfus's, Beilis's, or Frank's arrest and the resulting responses is vital to truly understand the event. Overall, however, Lindemann is not successful with his thesis. He does not use primary sources, and he does not use footnotes nearly enough, especially for a revisionist interpretation. Worse, he is insensitive, contradictory, perhaps somewhat anti-Semitic, and in places, an apologist for people who fostered and acted with hatred toward Jews. Ultimately, his book leaves readers with countless questions and many potentially destructive bits of random information. For example, "Sigmund Freud saw only one use to have anything to do with Americans: to get their money, for they were `useful for nothing else'."

In his other book, "Esau's Tears", Lindemann says: "History should not be written in the same way that cases are presented to a jury". He follows this exactly in "The Jew Accused".

The book is very clearly written, very balanced, providing a comprehensive background for each of these three famous (and not so famous, as is the case of Frank) trials.

Albert Lindemann's style is superb, his thinking is clear, he provides lots of relevant (and frequently surprising) details. This book is a pleasure to read, even though the subject matter is very disturbing and controvercial.

I had become curious why the Leo Frank case shared a very focused timeline of history with the Dreyfus and Beilis affairs when I discovered this book.

While most brief historical reviews, especially in light of the holocaust, naturally assumed anti-Semitism was the overwhelmingly driving force behind all three affairs, Lindemann pursues the history of these events more objectively and skeptically.

Lindemann traces the background of the rising Jew of the 20th century and their striking success in a changing modernized world; a world that left many rural, agrarian, and craftsmen behind. He distingusihes the 'objective' anti-semitism based on observable behaviors and situations from 'fantastic' anti-semtism based on the mythological European tales, such as blood libel. He does not deny that these forms of anti-semitism existed, or that their combination would become so brutally destructive.

Lindemann did, however, remain objective in analyazing how much of a role anti-semtism played in the three affairs. Dreyfus was ultimately exonerated and even had published anti semites such as Emile Zola defend him. To many this was an example of justice served and the discrediting of the anti-semitic anti-Dreyfusards. Beilis was largely defended by non Jewish neighbors who simply liked the man. In spite of the far more anti Semitic deliberate actions of the Tsarist government, Beilis was acquited in the country that was at the time far more primitive and overtly anti Semitic than the other two examined.

Ironically in the United States, the most open to Jews of the three countries examined, justice was served most poorly. The prosecutor, Dorsey, had good relations with Jews and was even partners with them. Watson, the populist, had little background in anti Semtism when he stirred up public anger against Frank. If Leo Frank had been a wealthy, northern Italian or Irish, Lindemann believes his fate would have been the same or worse.

Frank was the victim of some of the same social and cultural conflicts as Dreyfus. The explosion of the press from the emotional community trauma of a murdered 13 year old girl, the evidence available, the ensuing pressure of law enforcement, and Frank's poor legal representation probabaly played a far more influential roll than his Jewish identity.

This does not ignore the Jewish Question in these cases. Even today neo Nazi web sites replay the Frank case as proof of Jewish inferiority and depravity. Lindemann's perspective does bring a different approach to the Jewish aspect of these cases. ".. history, especially that transparently serving political agendas, can become hopelessly tangled in a web of miscperception."