Bidspirit auction | The Protocols of the Elders

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – First Yiddish Edition – Part III. Warsaw, 1934 - פראטאקאלן פון די ”זקני ציון” די גרעסטע פראוואקאציע אין דער יידישער געשיכטע - “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The Great Provocation in Jewish History, ” איבערזעצונג פונם רוסישן אריגינאל – “Translated from the Russian Original, ” published by Groshn Bibliotek (Groschen Library), Warsaw, 1934 – First Yiddish edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – Booklet No. 3, featuring the complete text of the forged antisemitic document, Protocols 16–24. (The final part of the series). Extremely rare. The publisher’s introduction to the first part of this Yiddish edition of the Protocols, published in Warsaw (!), states that the Bern Trial (held that same year to examine the authenticity of the Protocols, and concluding with a court ruling that the document was a forgery and prohibiting its distribution in Switzerland) had once again drawn the attention of the Jewish public to the great forgery in Jewish history. The publisher adds that in Hitler’s Germany the Protocols were being circulated in hundreds of thousands of copies, and that “the antisemites of every country regard the Protocols as their ‘sharpest weapon, ’” using them repeatedly to incite pogroms. It was therefore necessary for Jewish readers – the very people against whom the Protocols were directed – to become familiar with the document. The publishing house consequently decided to issue the Protocols in the language of the Jewish people, so that readers could recognize the fundamental methods employed by antisemites throughout the world and know how to confront them. The publisher further wrote: “So that the antisemites cannot argue that we Jews distorted or abridged this dreadful and shameful document, we prepared the translation from the Russian original according to the exact text of Sergei Nilus, who wrote it at the behest of the Tsarist police. We deliberately added nothing and omitted nothing, but left the forgery exposed in all its shameful and repulsive nakedness...”. In the present part, the fictional conspiracy described in the Protocols reaches its final stages. Following the accusations in the preceding parts that the Jews sought to undermine the political and social order, the text now purports to describe what the regime would look like once power had been concentrated in Jewish hands – how education and universities, the economy and credit system, public opinion, and relations between the government and the citizenry were to be controlled. Thus, for example, Protocol No. 20, entitled “דער פינאנציעלער פראגראם” [“The Financial Program”], is devoted to control over the economy and state finances. It discusses taxation, the state budget, capital, the circulation of money, and relations between the state and the owners of capital. Within the book’s conspiratorial narrative, the financial system is presented as a central instrument for controlling the population, with the claim that economic crises, debts, and loans could be used to weaken states and increase their dependence on the new center of power. The subsequent protocols deal with loans and state credit and with the power of gold and capital, as the text progresses from a description of the supposed means of seizing control to the order that was allegedly to follow, in which the economy would be entirely subordinated to the purported Jewish plan, and more. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the most widely circulated antisemitic document in the world, and one that had an enormous impact on the fate of the Jews in the 20th century. This forged antisemitic tract was circulated in Russia as early as 1903 with the encouragement of the Russian Church and the imperial court, and later became one of the prominent texts used by the Nazis as an ideological justification for the persecution of the Jews. The original texts were composed over a period of approximately 35 years (1868–1903), and even drew upon contemporary political developments connected with the Zionist movement in an attempt to lend credibility to the theory. The “document” describes a global plan of action comprising 24 chapters, each termed a “Protocol.” Each Protocol consists of numerous sections and subsections detailing an allegedly practical plan for a Jewish takeover of the world, supposedly ready to be put into effect. According to the Protocols, the leaders of the Jewish people, constituting a secret society known as the “Elders of Zion, ” gathered for a clandestine meeting at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. At this meeting they supposedly devised a conspiracy to seize control of the world’s wealth and the leadership of nations through the calculated moral corruption of great civilizations, the exploitation of wealth belonging to others, and the fomenting of wars between friendly countries. (Even today, antisemitic groups make extensive use of the document in their campaigns against Jews and the State of Israel.