Heritage: Civilization and the Jews #106; No. 106; Roads From the Ghetto

<v Narrator 1>Major funding for this program has been provided by the Charles H. <v Narrator 1>Revson Foundation, Petrie Stores Corporation and the National <v Narrator 1>Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding has been provided by the following <v Narrator 1>contributors. <v Narrator 1>A complete donor list is available at WNET. <v Abba Eban>The ghetto of Venice.

<v Abba Eban>These walls stand today as a reminder of the long ages of Jewish isolation. <v Abba Eban>For centuries in this city, as in other cities of Western Europe, Jews lived <v Abba Eban>apart from their Christian neighbors. <v Abba Eban>Ghetto walls and legal restrictions kept them separate. <v Abba Eban>And Jewish traditions fostered a separate way of life. <v Abba Eban>In the course of a single century, this way of life would change. <v Abba Eban>The way of life of all men would change. <v Abba Eban>The Jews would break free of their ghetto isolation and join in the creation <v Abba Eban>of a modern world. [hopeful music] <v Abba Eban>[machines whirring] [intense music] At the end of the 18th century, two great

<v Abba Eban>revolutionary forces burst upon the European world. <v Abba Eban>Revolutions in politics and in industry would drive and draw all of Europe <v Abba Eban>through a century of dramatic change [train whistles]: the 19th century. <v Abba Eban>In the closing years of the 18th century and the early years of the 19th, <v Abba Eban>both shores of the English Channel were shaken by some of their most profound and <v Abba Eban>convulsive forces in recorded history. <v Abba Eban>The clearest manifestations of this upheaval were the industrial revolution, <v Abba Eban>which had begun in England in about 1780, and the French Revolution, <v Abba Eban>which began in 1789. <v Abba Eban>[explosions] [singing] [screaming] Out of the turmoil of revolution, the Enlightenment

<v Abba Eban>ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity were shown as a beacon <v Abba Eban>for all the world. <v Woman 1>All men are born and remain free and equal in rights. <v Woman 1>The goal of all political association is to preserve those natural <v Woman 1>and inalienable rights. <v Abba Eban>It was a new political order. <v Speaker>In 1790, the Jews of France asked to be accepted as citizens in the French <v Speaker>Republic for two years. <v Speaker>The National Assembly debated could Jews and Christians overcome centuries <v Speaker>of separation and join as equals? <v Speaker>At last, in 1791, the National Assembly accepted the Jews as <v Speaker>fellow citizens of the French nation. <v Speaker>The French armies under Napoleon Bonaparte marched across Europe. <v Speaker>Carrying with them the ideals of the French Revolution

<v Speaker>in country after country, in Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary. <v Speaker>Medieval restrictions were swept aside and political rights were granted <v Speaker>to all. <v Speaker>For the first time, Jews were offered political equality and citizenship in these <v Speaker>nations of Europe. <v Speaker>But the Jews entered this new age with their own ancient sense of separate nationhood. <v Speaker>For centuries, each Jewish child had learned that he was part of a separate nation. <v Speaker>A nation whose history began in the pages of the Hebrew Bible. <v Speaker>So Kanaan said a line can <v Speaker>a bitch. <v Speaker>How many children today still learn the lessons which have endured over the centuries <v Speaker>average because of dysfunction? <v Speaker>In God, said Abraham.

<v Speaker>You must leave your father's House and Senate A before you are going to become the father <v Speaker>of any new people. <v Speaker>This gives me the spirit of nationhood had sustained the Jews. <v Speaker>Then the money bound them together in a diverse. <v Speaker>And given meaning to their trials and suffering. <v Speaker>And then there is John Visnic. <v Speaker>The prospect of citizenship in the nations of Europe raised a troubling question <v Speaker>of how the Jews were Frenchmen, Germans and Austrians. <v Speaker>Were they still a separate nation silversmith again? <v Speaker>And if they were not a separate nation, what did it mean to dispense the need <v Speaker>to make an escape? <v Speaker>Well, I think the part that asal the OP would be not <v Speaker>only in the quiet of their own consciences, but in the turmoil of social <v Speaker>and political events that lay ahead. <v Speaker>Is it converted into the hotel? <v Speaker>In 1815, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo.

<v Speaker>Reactionary rulers throughout Europe tried to undo what the French Revolution <v Speaker>had done. But even as governments tried to restore the old ways <v Speaker>of life. Economic forces were transforming European society. <v Speaker>Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist, wrote, <v Speaker>It is the age of machinery. <v Speaker>The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver and falls into iron fingers that ply <v Speaker>it faster. There is no end to machinery. <v Speaker>Nothing can resist us. <v Speaker>Factories turned out new goods to satisfy the needs of a growing population. <v Speaker>New wealth was created and a new social class. <v Speaker>The industrial workers. <v Speaker>Peasants and farmers flocked to the cities. <v Speaker>Some of them driven off the land.

<v Speaker>Some of them are attracted by the new opportunities of the industrial economy. <v Speaker>The agricultural world in which people had lived for hundreds of years was replaced <v Speaker>by a dynamic urban industrial society. <v Speaker>The products of the industrial revolution flowed to busy markets in London <v Speaker>and in all the major cities of Europe. <v Speaker>This expanding trade gave new power to the rising middle classes <v Speaker>to merchants, manufacturers and professionals in the changing <v Speaker>economy. <v Speaker>The Jews of Western Europe found new opportunities. <v Speaker>They were literate and many had experience in trade. <v Speaker>Some became manufacturers of clothing or textiles. <v Speaker>Some became merchants, a few became bankers. <v Speaker>At the beginning of the 19th century may have.

<v Speaker>I'm Shel Rothschild, a Frankfurt on mine was a financial advisor <v Speaker>to the ruler of one of the many German states. <v Speaker>In 18 5, Rothschild's eldest son, Nathan went to London, <v Speaker>where he made his fortune as a stockbroker and banker. <v Speaker>His four brothers established branches of the family bank in Paris, Vienna, <v Speaker>Naples and Berlin. <v Speaker>Within 20 years, they became one of the most powerful banking families in Europe. <v Speaker>The Rothschilds were a dramatic symbol of Jewish success in the modern world. <v Speaker>For Jews like the Rothschilds, social acceptance was possible. <v Speaker>But for the majority of Jews, legal restrictions and ancient prejudice <v Speaker>were still barriers to social equality. <v Speaker>In most places, Jews were excluded from government.

<v Speaker>Excluded from posts in universities. <v Speaker>They needed permits even to reside in certain cities such as Berlin. <v Speaker>In the 1820s, many prominent German Jews converted to Christianity. <v Speaker>Among them, the poet Heinrich Hiner. <v Speaker>The baptismal certificate is the ticket of admission to European culture. <v Speaker>Berlin is well worth a sermon. <v Speaker>For most Jews, however, the idea of baptism was unacceptable. <v Speaker>They wanted to join the non-Jewish world without abandoning their Jewish <v Speaker>identity. <v Speaker>But many traditional Jewish customs and practices reinforced their separateness. <v Speaker>By the 1820s in Germany, some Jewish reformers were questioning the validity <v Speaker>of these practices.

<v Speaker>We can no longer adhere blindly to forms and prescriptions from a time <v Speaker>long past and forever vanished. <v Speaker>We can no longer observe commands which have no spiritual hold on us. <v Speaker>The reform movement established its own congregations. <v Speaker>Here in the West London synagogue, reformed Jews appeared as English as any <v Speaker>other Englishman. <v Speaker>Oh, for. <v Speaker>Organ music and a choir were introduced into the Jewish service. <v Speaker>The reformers sought to create a modern expression of Jewish values and beliefs.

<v Speaker>We are not a separate people, said the reformers. <v Speaker>We are Europeans different from others only in our religion. <v Speaker>A German rabbi, Samsón Rafael Hirsch, disagreed. <v Speaker>Judaism is not a religion. <v Speaker>The synagogue is not a church. <v Speaker>And the rabbi is not a priest. <v Speaker>Judaism is not a mere adjunct to life. <v Speaker>To be a Jew is the sum total of our task in life. <v Speaker>Most Jews did indeed hold to the traditional ways, but gradually <v Speaker>they accepted those changes that seemed natural and inevitable in a changing world. <v Speaker>The unity of Jewish religious practice had been shattered. <v Speaker>It could never be restored.

<v Speaker>The central European city of Prague still reflects the character of traditional <v Speaker>Europe. <v Speaker>A world of inherited privilege for the few. <v Speaker>And of poverty and powerlessness. For most of us. <v Speaker>As the early decades of the 19th century unfolded, this traditional world <v Speaker>was being undermined by the forces of a changing economy. <v Speaker>The growing middle classes were demanding political rights first promised <v Speaker>in the French Revolution. <v Speaker>They were demanding democracy in 1848. <v Speaker>Guards fired on a political demonstration in Paris. <v Speaker>The people rioted. They barricaded the streets and fought back the army. <v Speaker>Spontaneous revolt flared in Italy, Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Germany, <v Speaker>everywhere. Jews joined in the struggle for liberty.

<v Speaker>A rabbi of Vienna declared We ask nothing for ourselves. <v Speaker>Everything for the nation and the fatherland. <v Speaker>First, the right of all men to live, to breathe, to think, to speak. <v Speaker>First, the rights of all citizens. <v Speaker>Afterwards, our rights as Jews. <v Speaker>In Frankfurt and elsewhere throughout Europe, hastily gathered assemblies, created <v Speaker>liberal constitutions and granted political equality to Jews and other <v Speaker>religious minorities. <v Speaker>But the new governments were disorganized and inexperienced. <v Speaker>They were quickly overthrown as conservative rulers everywhere reasserted their <v Speaker>authority. <v Speaker>It is true in one sense that the revolutions failed, but in <v Speaker>another sense they succeeded. <v Speaker>All of Europe had glimpsed a vision of a more democratic society.

<v Speaker>A vision that could not be ignored even by the most powerful of monarchs <v Speaker>in Vienna. <v Speaker>The failure of the revolution of 1848 was followed by the accession to the imperial <v Speaker>throne of the youthful France Yosef. <v Speaker>He ruled here and the half-built Palace for 68 years, while the <v Speaker>foundations of his Austro-Hungarian Empire were being undermined by the <v Speaker>diverse national aspirations of his many subject peoples. <v Speaker>The idea that political boundaries ought to encompass a people with a common language <v Speaker>and culture, the idea of the nation state had sprung from the French <v Speaker>Revolution together with the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. <v Speaker>After 18, 48 Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Italians and Germans <v Speaker>all clamored for independence for their own nation states in which <v Speaker>every citizen could participate fully in government and politics.

<v Speaker>Nowhere was the struggle for political equality as far advanced as in Great Britain, <v Speaker>Jews and other minorities were in most respects full equals of the Protestant <v Speaker>majority. <v Speaker>But here in the House of Commons, every new member of parliament was required <v Speaker>to take an oath on the true faith of a Christian. <v Speaker>This oath excluded Jews from the highest levels of government. <v Speaker>In 1847, Lionel Rothchild was elected to the House of Commons. <v Speaker>He presented himself at parliament, but refused to take the oath he was <v Speaker>obliged to withdraw. <v Speaker>Rothschild's supporters introduced a bill to remove the barrier of the oath. <v Speaker>The Anglican Church was swift to respond. <v Speaker>If you destroy the groundwork of Christianity upon which this legislature is based <v Speaker>in order to gratify a handful of ambitious men, you will destroy

<v Speaker>Christian Kingdom. <v Speaker>Others disagreed. England, they said, was not an exclusively Christian <v Speaker>nation. <v Speaker>What is proposed is not that Jews should legislate for a Christian community, <v Speaker>but that a legislature composed of Christians and Jews should legislate for a community <v Speaker>of Christians and Jews. <v Speaker>The debate continued for eleven years. <v Speaker>In 1858, after having been elected six times. <v Speaker>Lionel Rothchild was finally admitted to the House of Commons. <v Speaker>He placed his hand on the Old Testament and took his oath as a member of Parliament. <v Speaker>The last major obstacle to Jewish participation in the political life of Britain <v Speaker>had been removed. <v Speaker>Among the members of parliament who had supported Lionel Rothchild was the son of <v Speaker>an Italian Jewish immigrant.

<v Speaker>His name was Benjamin Disraeli. <v Speaker>He had converted to Christianity, yet in the eyes of his colleagues, he remained <v Speaker>a Jew. <v Speaker>10 years after Rothschild's victory, Disraeli became prime minister of Great <v Speaker>Britain. <v Speaker>His rise to power was the evidence of a growing acceptance of Jews in the <v Speaker>social and political life of Europe. <v Speaker>The liberal cause was making steady progress across the continent. <v Speaker>New nation states were established with liberal constitutions and country <v Speaker>after country granted political emancipation to the Jews, <v Speaker>but emancipation ended at the frontier of Russia. <v Speaker>Beyond that frontier, more than 50 percent of all the Jews in the world lived <v Speaker>under Russian rule. <v Speaker>The vast Russian empire lay a thousand miles to the east of France and England. <v Speaker>It was a land as incomprehensible to most Western Europeans as it

<v Speaker>was remote. <v Speaker>Its customs were medieval. It's society, autocratic, all <v Speaker>but untouched by the forces that were shaking Western Europe. <v Speaker>The Russian world was heir to the spiritual values of the Byzantine Empire and the <v Speaker>Eastern Orthodox faith. <v Speaker>Does Benoit. <v Speaker>At the end of the 18th century, Russia annexed large parts of Poland,

<v Speaker>Lithuania and the Ukraine. <v Speaker>With this expansion, Russia brought under its rule most of the great Jewish community <v Speaker>of Poland. <v Speaker>For centuries, Russia had excluded all Jews. <v Speaker>Now it found within its borders a Jewish population of more than a million, <v Speaker>a community of artisans and tradesmen. <v Speaker>Of innkeepers as much as. <v Speaker>Russian merchants are alarmed at the prospect of competition from these Jews demanded <v Speaker>protection. <v Speaker>The government responded. <v Speaker>It drew a line around the provinces where the Jews already lived and forbade <v Speaker>them to leave this territory. <v Speaker>The region was called the pale of settlement. <v Speaker>Everywhere within the great expanse of the pale, Jews were a minority

<v Speaker>living in the lands of other peoples, living among the peasants <v Speaker>of the Ukraine or of PODER of Lithuania or of Moldavia. <v Speaker>Christians and Jews lived side by side depending upon each other. <v Speaker>In a rural economy centered on the local market town called in <v Speaker>Yiddish, the shtetl. <v Speaker>Jews were the merchants in this agricultural economy. <v Speaker>The peasants come from many miles around bringing their livestock and vegetables, <v Speaker>their fish and hides their wagon loads of grain. <v Speaker>In exchange, they buy the city produce, which the Jews import dry

<v Speaker>goods, fruits, oil and spades. <v Speaker>Although Jews and their peasant neighbors mingled in the marketplace and in the streets <v Speaker>of town, they were separated by culture, language and religion. <v Speaker>Had their own local governments, their own courts and school. <v Speaker>And their own charitable institutions to care for the poor. <v Speaker>The rhythms of Jewish life with the rhythms of the religious calendar of the Sabbath, <v Speaker>the festivals and the holy days. <v Speaker>A German Jew admired the pious integrity of their lives. <v Speaker>A book is their fatherland. <v Speaker>They live in closed within the boundaries of this book.

<v Speaker>Here they exercise their in alienable right of citizenship. <v Speaker>Here, they can be neither expelled nor despised by the <v Speaker>Hasidic Jews of today, inherit a legacy of dress, of belief, <v Speaker>of custom and tradition from their Eastern European past, steeped <v Speaker>in intervening on the ballot. <v Speaker>Among the most respected Jewish communal institutions of Eastern Europe was <v Speaker>the Yeshiva, the Advanced Academy of Religious Education <v Speaker>State. The Great Yeshivas of the Pale were famous for their scholarship <v Speaker>among Jews everywhere, families made great sacrifices <v Speaker>so that their sons might devote themselves entirely to the study of the sacred texts, <v Speaker>the Torah and the Talmud for all men. <v Speaker>Study was the means by which Jewish law could be understood and applied to daily life. <v Speaker>A man who puts out his hand to beg does so because he is pure evil like. <v Speaker>You have to get out.

<v Speaker>Unfortunately, in our times, the poor are forced to put out their hands each day. <v Speaker>It was named to the rich man doesn't take his hands from his pocket to give to the poor <v Speaker>and b the poor man must beg first. <v Speaker>Isn't this true? <v Speaker>A preoccupation with ethical values infused Jewish culture with <v Speaker>a keen moral awareness that gave the Jewish community its particular <v Speaker>costand flavor i.e. <v Speaker>lips. <v Speaker>I today you see some of <v Speaker>the talk of dispute. <v Speaker>An argument to a Talmudic study was the discipline by which they live. <v Speaker>This distinctive culture was deeply alien to the Russian world. <v Speaker>The Russian government wanted the Jews to abandon their study of Torah and Talmud, <v Speaker>to abandon their separate surveys. <v Speaker>Flush em all this from a lawyer belonged to some ibish.

<v Speaker>I guess it's going to show companies that says. <v Speaker>At the beginning of the 19th century, the Jews of Eastern Europe would come face <v Speaker>to face with the autocratic power of the Russian state. <v Speaker>The tsar of Russia, the emperor, was absolute in his authority. <v Speaker>His will was law for SA's sought to modernize <v Speaker>their economy, to force all the peoples of the empire to serve the interests <v Speaker>of the state. <v Speaker>Under Nicholas, the first Jewish children as young as 12 were drafted <v Speaker>into the army to serve for 25 years. <v Speaker>Whole communities were forcibly relocated. <v Speaker>When Nicholas died in 1855, it is said that there was such rejoicing <v Speaker>that people embraced each other in the streets of St. Petersburg. <v Speaker>Nicholas was succeeded by his son, Alexander the Second.

<v Speaker>Like his predecessors, Alexander wanted to transform Russian society. <v Speaker>He, too, became an autocratic ruler, but he was a man of more generous spirit. <v Speaker>He freed the 30 million Russians who were bound to the land as serfs. <v Speaker>He encouraged modern industry and brought a measure of civil liberty to his people. <v Speaker>Alexander's policies accelerated the changes in Russian society. <v Speaker>To stimulate commerce, he allowed a few thousand of the most successful Jewish <v Speaker>businessmen and professionals to leave the pail and settle anywhere <v Speaker>in the Empire. <v Speaker>Their children were able to enter the great universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg. <v Man 1>When we came out of the university, we bowed before the sanctuary that had <v Man 1>opened its doors to us.

<v Man 1>We embraced each other. Proudly, we walked home eager to shout to everyone we met, have <v Man 1>you heard? We are students. <v Abba Eban>These Jewish students learned Russian instead of Hebrew. <v Abba Eban>Science, mathematics and literature instead of Torah and ?inaudible?. <v Abba Eban>They brought the Jewish passion for study with them as they entered the modern world <v Abba Eban>and left the traditional world behind. <v Abba Eban>While Russian society changed, the Russian government did not, <v Abba Eban>the people remained powerless. <v Abba Eban>Economic modernization disrupted their lives. <v Abba Eban>The old network of rural commerce was destroyed.

<v Abba Eban>Thousands left the villages and farms and headed for the cities. <v Abba Eban>[ominous music] Many lost their occupations and were forced to wander in search of <v Abba Eban>employment. [explosions] [horse whinnying] <v Abba Eban>In 1881, Alexander the Second was assassinated by anarchists. <v Abba Eban>Rumors spread that the Jews were responsible. <v Abba Eban>A few weeks later in the city of Elizabethgrad, a riot broke <v Abba Eban>out among the peasants and workers. <v Abba Eban>They attacked the Jews while the police looked on. <v Abba Eban>By the end of 1881, the riots had spread to more than 200 towns

<v Abba Eban>and villages. <v Man 2>The air resounded with wild shouts. <v Man 2>The destruction began. <v Man 2>Clouds of feathers whirled in the air. <v Man 2>The din of breaking windows. <v Man 2>The crying, shouting and despair. <v Abba Eban>Pogrom. It was the Russian word for riot. <v Speaker>In the decades that followed, pogroms would break out a game and a game with <v Speaker>terrifying consequences. <v Speaker>The Russian government would begin to use pogroms as a tool of policy <v Speaker>to turn the anger of the populace away from the state and toward the <v Speaker>Jews. <v Speaker>It was a crushing blow for all Jews, including those who had entered into Russian life. <v Speaker>Until now, we thought of ourselves as Russians, not as Jews.

<v Speaker>The events of these last weeks have shown us how tragic has been our mistake. <v Speaker>Yes, we are Jews. <v Speaker>Many looked for other lands in which they could settle. <v Speaker>Tens of thousands fled the pale in 1881, turning their eyes <v Speaker>toward new worlds. <v Speaker>A few young enthusiasts headed for the ancient Jewish homeland, Palestine. <v Speaker>But the vast majority of those who left Eastern Europe headed west <v Speaker>through the great ports of Germany, through Breman and Hamburg, bound <v Speaker>for America. <v Speaker>In the 40 years following 1881, about 2 million Jews, a third

<v Speaker>of the Jews in Eastern Europe were passed through these halls, clinging to their few <v Speaker>belongings, headed toward what they hoped would be a better. <v Speaker>The news was all over Pallotta that my mother had a steamer ticket for America. <v Speaker>Everyone wanted to handle the ticket. <v Speaker>How much did it cost? <v Speaker>Was it sure that we could get kosher food on the ship? <v Speaker>Well, she must take all the feather beds. <v Speaker>Feather beds are scarce in America. <v Speaker>In America, they sleep on hard mattresses. <v Speaker>Even in the winter. <v Speaker>A steamboat ticket was a passport to a new life. <v Speaker>Paris, 1889, 100 years have passed since

<v Speaker>the French Revolution. <v Speaker>To commemorate the anniversary, the French erected a structure that rose over the city. <v Speaker>The Eiffel Tower was a tribute to science, to optimism and to the future of mankind. <v Speaker>Throughout Western Europe, the population was growing. <v Speaker>Cities were expanding. The middle classes, securing their power <v Speaker>enjoyed the benefits of a prosperous society. <v Speaker>The new economy to fill it with astonishing speed. <v Speaker>Industrial society produced more goods for more people than ever before in history. <v Speaker>Great wealth was created, but also great social dislocations.

<v Speaker>Men who had once worked the land now worked machinery. <v Speaker>Jobs were sporadic and uncertain. <v Speaker>The wages were low, the hours long. <v Speaker>Machines took away the livelihood of artisans and craftsmen. <v Speaker>Thousands who had prospered in the old economy were threatened by the new. <v Speaker>The modern world seems to bear down on them with implacable force. <v Speaker>Those who had lost in the new economy turned their anger and frustration against those <v Speaker>who had gained. <v Speaker>By the 1880s, most Jews in Western Europe had become middle class. <v Speaker>They had won their political rights.

<v Speaker>They had won a place in European society as well. <v Speaker>A Jewish textile manufacturer wrote about his home village in Germany. <v Speaker>At one time, there were quite a number of poor Jews in the community. <v Speaker>Those who still remember those earlier days must acknowledge that a transformation <v Speaker>took place before our very eyes, which the new generation cannot even <v Speaker>imagine. <v Speaker>In Germany, France, Austria, the Jews were now above average in wealth <v Speaker>and education. <v Speaker>They brought their tradition of literacy and scholarship to the liberal professions, <v Speaker>helping to shape modern law, medicine and journalism. <v Speaker>Those who are accustomed to look down upon the Jews and to despise them were astonished <v Speaker>by the extent of their achievements. <v Speaker>Their new visibility was in itself an affront to their enemies. <v Speaker>To those who hated and dreaded the rapidly changing modern world,

<v Speaker>the Jews became the symbol for everything that they feared and could not understand. <v Speaker>By the 1880s, shrewd and opportunistic politicians recognized <v Speaker>that resentment of Jewish success could be used as a source of political power <v Speaker>anti-Semitism. <v Speaker>The word was new. <v Speaker>But the hatreds it reflected were ancient. <v Speaker>And from those hatreds, the anti-Semites created a dangerous political movement. <v Speaker>They wrenched from the work of Darwin and other biologists. <v Speaker>Whatever theories could be twisted to support the idea of a Jewish race. <v Speaker>They blame the Jews for the growth of industry. <v Speaker>They blame them for poverty and suffering. <v Speaker>They blamed them for the modern world <v Speaker>in Vienna, where the Jewish community was large and prosperous. <v Speaker>Kaluga ran for mayor on an anti-Semitic platform.

<v Speaker>He was elected over and over again. <v Speaker>An Austrian poet described the irrational politics of the day. <v Speaker>Politics is magic. <v Speaker>He who knows how to summon the forces from the deep him, will they fall? <v Speaker>By the 1890s, the forces of anti-Semitism had reached <v Speaker>as far as these chambers of the Austrian parliament. <v Speaker>Here in Vienna, as elsewhere, political parties sought to gain electoral <v Speaker>support by pandering to popular anti-Semitic attitudes, <v Speaker>and there were anti-Semites for every political persuasion. <v Speaker>Radical anti-Semites. Saw the Jews as leading the forces of capitalism, <v Speaker>liberal anti-Semites saw them as a backward Oriental people <v Speaker>incapable of absorption into the nations of Europe, while conservative anti-Semites <v Speaker>saw the Jews as rootless, lacking in tradition.

<v Speaker>Dangerously modern. Clearly, it was not the real content of Jewish life and <v Speaker>character that mattered to the anti-Semites. <v Speaker>If they are Jews with the creation and reflection of their own terrors, fantasies <v Speaker>and neuroses. To attack the Jews was to attack whatever it was <v Speaker>that they disliked in the modern world. <v Speaker>As the Jews strove to shed the burdens of traditional hatred and prejudice, <v Speaker>the anti-Semites found them to be a vulnerable and politically useful <v Speaker>target. <v Speaker>In France, by the 1890s, the Jews had become fully integrated <v Speaker>in the life of the nation, sharing equally in the rights and duties of citizens. <v Speaker>It was here that one of the most notorious anti-Semitic episodes took place.

<v Speaker>In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, <v Speaker>was accused of spying for the Germans. <v Speaker>He was tried and convicted on forged evidence. <v Speaker>In a public ceremony, Dreyfus was stripped of his rank while <v Speaker>in the crowd around him. There were shouts of death to the traitor. <v Speaker>Death to the Jews. <v Speaker>The anti Semitic press took up the cry. <v Speaker>What a terrible lesson. This disgraceful treason of the Jew Dreyfus <v Speaker>all the maneuvers of judo are directed against the very soul of France. <v Speaker>Dreyfus was, in fact, entirely innocent.

<v Speaker>He was exiled to the prison colony of Devil's Island. <v Speaker>For four years, his case was forgotten. <v Speaker>Then in 1898, the writer Emile Zola published an open <v Speaker>letter to the president of France. <v Speaker>I will tell the truth. It is my duty to speak. <v Speaker>My nights would be haunted by the specter of an innocent man atoning for a crime he did <v Speaker>not commit. I accused General Biegel of having had in his hands decisive <v Speaker>proof of Dreyfus, his innocence and of having suppressed it. <v Speaker>I accuse general message of being an accomplice. <v Speaker>I accuse General BWF of being an accomplice. <v Speaker>I accuse the court martial of condemning an innocent man. <v Speaker>Too many Frenchmen sonars attack on the generals seemed to be an attack on <v Speaker>France itself. His article unleashed a storm. <v Speaker>Mobs rioted in the streets of Paris.

<v Speaker>Jewels were for families and friendships were torn apart. <v Speaker>All France took sides for Dreyfus or against him. <v Speaker>Antisemites throughout Europe exploited the Dreyfus affair. <v Speaker>In Rome, the official Jesuit newspaper denounced the emancipation of the Jews. <v Speaker>The Jews have invented the allegations of a judicial error. <v Speaker>The real error was granting them French nationality. <v Speaker>That law must be revoked not only in France, but in Germany, Austria and <v Speaker>Italy as well. <v Speaker>Zola and his allies held their ground. <v Speaker>In 1899, an official inquiry began. <v Speaker>It found that the evidence against Dreyfus had indeed been forged by officers of the <v Speaker>French army. A second court martial again found Dreyfus guilty, <v Speaker>although this time with extenuating circumstances. <v Speaker>Dreyfus was fully cleared only in 1960.

<v Speaker>He resumed his commission and was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor. <v Speaker>Most Jews in France were reassured by Dreyfus his victory. <v Speaker>They felt that they, along with Dreyfus, had won their case against the anti-Semites. <v Speaker>Among the journalists in Paris during the Dreyfus affair was a Viennese Jew, <v Speaker>Theodore Hertzel. <v Speaker>He came to a different conclusion. <v Speaker>We have honestly striven everywhere to merge ourselves and the social life <v Speaker>of surrounding communities and to preserve only the faith of our fathers. <v Speaker>It has not been permitted to us in countries where we have lived for centuries. <v Speaker>We are still cried down as strangers. <v Speaker>If the Jews could not be accepted as Europeans, then they remained a separate

<v Speaker>nation without a home. <v Speaker>Hertzel called for the creation of a Jewish state. <v Speaker>The movement to create this state called itself Zionism after the <v Speaker>name of a hill in Jerusalem, Mt. <v Speaker>Zion. <v Speaker>In 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, 200 delegates from all over <v Speaker>Europe gathered for the First World Zionist Congress. <v Speaker>Hudson's presence electrified the Congress. <v Speaker>The Jews who will it shall achieve their state, we shall <v Speaker>live at last as free men on our own soil. <v Speaker>A few Jewish settlers from Russia had already made their way to Palestine. <v Speaker>Now, we've heard inspiration design, this idea became a political

<v Speaker>movement. <v Speaker>The Zionist movement had its strongest appeal in Russia, where Jews were seeking <v Speaker>to forge a better way of life. <v Speaker>By the end of the 19th century, many Jews in the pale lived in cities <v Speaker>rather than market towns. <v Speaker>Increasing numbers worked in factories and in marginal industries. <v Speaker>Poverty was widespread and recurring, pogroms a constant source <v Speaker>of fear. <v Speaker>In 1897, a group of Jewish socialists gathered in the city of Vilna <v Speaker>to form what would be known as the Jewish Labor Bund. <v Speaker>For centuries, the. You lived like a slave when his blood was

<v Speaker>shed. He fell like a dumb animal under the hand of the slaughter. <v Speaker>But the spirit of the ancient Jewish heroes has been reborn <v Speaker>among the Jewish workers. <v Speaker>The Buddhists joined with other socialists to fight for the rights of workers <v Speaker>through revolution. <v Speaker>They hope to cure the ills of Russian life and end the oppressive poverty <v Speaker>of the Jewish women. <v Speaker>Putting aside their traditional role, joined in the new movements in Zionism, <v Speaker>Buddhism joined in the struggle to reshape Jewish life. <v Speaker>Yiddish the ordinary speech of the Jewish masses had never been taken seriously <v Speaker>by educated Jews. Its combination of Hebrew characters and German

<v Speaker>dialect that seemed common and uncultivated. <v Speaker>Now it became the vehicle of a renaissance in Jewish culture. <v Speaker>Newspapers and journals brought the modern world into the lives of millions <v Speaker>of Yiddish speaking Jews. <v Speaker>Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. <v Speaker>The world's classics were translated into English. <v Speaker>Rightest created a new literature in Brutha Edition Heaver Hi, Im <v Speaker>Naaman Bialy, the Hebrew poet Shimon Cubanos, <v Speaker>the historian of the Jewish people Mendeloff moffett's Forum of the Yiddish <v Speaker>novelist Yehuda Labe parents, the Yiddish poet. <v Speaker>Sholom FMV Yiddish writer, a Yiddish theater

<v Speaker>developer. <v Speaker>A secular and popular culture was born based on the daily life of the Jewish <v Speaker>people. <v Speaker>The stream of Jewish culture and Jewish life would flow into the larger European <v Speaker>world as the 19th century drew to a close. <v Speaker>In the vivid urban life of Vienna, Paris, Berlin, London and <v Speaker>St. Petersburg, the consequences of a century of social and economic <v Speaker>change were visible everywhere. <v Speaker>The world was in ferment. <v Speaker>New industries appeared as if overnight new sciences, new art forms,

<v Speaker>new ways of life. <v Speaker>At the beginning of the 19th century, most people had expected to live in a world <v Speaker>very much like that of their parents. <v Speaker>By the end of the century, everyone knew that in his own lifetime, <v Speaker>the world would be transformed beyond recognition. <v Speaker>Every aspect of society, end of life, was open to question, was filled <v Speaker>with possibilities. <v Speaker>Her generation joined enthusiastically in the exploration of the modern world. <v Speaker>In every field of endeavor, Jews played an important role. <v Speaker>Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud. <v Speaker>Arnold Schoenberg, Amedeo Modigliani, Franz Kafka, <v Speaker>Gustav Mahler, Marcel Proust, Albert Einstein.

<v Speaker>These men were Jews. They were also modern Europeans. <v Speaker>Being Jewish no longer restricted them to a separate Jewish world. <v Speaker>What they contributed was not to a body of Jewish culture, but to the common <v Speaker>heritage of all Europeans. <v Speaker>In the capitals of Europe, the arrival of the 20th century was saluted with <v Speaker>cannons. <v Speaker>One who heard them wrote, I listened with a kind of shiver. <v Speaker>One knew all the 19th century had carried away. <v Speaker>One did not know what the 20th would bring. <v Speaker>In March of 1912, the Princess Louise was married in Moscow. <v Speaker>The Tsar Nicholas the second and the Tsarina ALEXANDRA led the procession with <v Speaker>Crown Prince Alexis at their side.

<v Speaker>Following them were the princesses Olga, Tatyana, Marie and <v Speaker>Anastasia. <v Speaker>The wedding brought together the potentates and royalty of all European lands, <v Speaker>including France. Joseph, Emperor of Austria, and Phil Helm with the second <v Speaker>emperor of Germany. <v Speaker>Within six years, the empires of France, Yosef and Wilhelm, would be gone. <v Speaker>Nicholas and his family would be dead. <v Speaker>A revolution in Russia and a world war in Europe would bring an end to <v Speaker>these last vestiges of the old political order. <v Speaker>The Russian pale of settlement came to an end as armies marched back and forth across

<v Speaker>the region. It's populations were evacuated, it's social institutions <v Speaker>destroyed. <v Speaker>Jews fought as citizens of the European nations. <v Speaker>As Germans, as Frenchmen, as Austrians, Englishmen, Russians, <v Speaker>for the Jews, as for all others, the world of established truth was gone. <v Speaker>One hundred years before the ghetto, the closed community, the religious laws <v Speaker>had formed the Jewish identity. <v Speaker>Now, each Jew was forced to discover for himself the meaning of his <v Speaker>Jewish heritage.

<v Speaker>Now, there was complex diversity in Jewish life. <v Speaker>Each Jew would have to find his own place in the world, both promising and precarious. <v Speaker>In November 1917, after British forces gained control of Palestine, <v Speaker>the Zionist leader, Haim Weitzman, secured a pledge from the government of Great <v Speaker>Britain. It would be known as the Balfour Declaration after its Sinar <v Speaker>Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour. <v Speaker>His Majesty's government viewed with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national <v Speaker>home for the Jewish people. <v Speaker>Thirty years later, the promise of the Balfour Declaration would be fulfilled in the <v Speaker>creation of the state of Israel. <v Speaker>The diversity of Jewish life was now to find expression in new lands

<v Speaker>where new opportunities awaited. <v Speaker>To many, it seems that the greatest hope lay in a land to the west across <v Speaker>the Atlantic. <v Abba Eban>Through this great hoard of the Ellis Island Immigration Center in New York Bay, <v Abba Eban>passed Gentile and Jew, the poor and the dispossessed, <v Abba Eban>the hungry and the disenfranchised. <v Abba Eban>The beacon that drew them here was the vision of an America where a new tradition <v Abba Eban>would be forged based on universal dreams of justice and equality. <v Abba Eban>The prophet Isaiah had written then justice shall dwell in the wilderness <v Abba Eban>and righteousness shall abide in the fruitful field. <v Abba Eban>America, they dreamed and hoped, would be that fruitful field. <v Abba Eban>[music]

<v Narrator 1>Major funding for this program has been provided by the Charles H.

<v Narrator 1>Revson Foundation, Petrie Stores Corporation and the National <v Narrator 1>Endowment for the Humanities. <v Narrator 1>Additional funding has been provided by the following contributors. <v Narrator 1>A complete donor list is available at WNET. <v Narrator 1>Abba Eban has written a companion book to this series, which is published by Summit <v Narrator 1>Books and is available in bookstores and libraries. <v Narrator 1>[PBS theme plays]