Wir Juden

Wir Juden (We Jews) is a 1934 book by German rabbi Joachim Prinz celebrating Hitler's rise to power and its defeat of liberalism.[1]

Contents

Lost fortunes of liberalism

Prinz rejoices at the fall of liberalism:

The meaning of the German Revolution for the German nation will eventually be clear to those who have created it and formed its image. Its meaning for us must be set forth there: the fortunes of liberalism are lost. The only form of political life which has helped Jewish assimilation is sunk.[2]

Support for anti-assimilation efforts

Another notable passage concerns Jewish assimilation:

We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration of belonging to the Jewish nation and the Jewish race. A state built upon the principle of the purity of nation and race can only be honored and respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind. Having so declared himself, he will never be capable of faulty loyalty towards a state. The state cannot want other Jews but such as declare themselves as belonging to their nation.[3]

Practical aims of collaboration

He adds that :

For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration even of a government fundamentally hostile to Jews, because in dealing with the Jewish question not sentimentalities are involved but a real problem whose solution interests all people’s, and at the present moment especially the German people.[4]

Legacy

Usage by critics of Judaism

According to Israeli critic Israel Shahak, it is full of crude flatteries of Nazi ideology and glee about the decline of the ideas of the French Revolution. Shahak goes further and says that since Prinz was a rabbi, his book tends to reveal the totalitarian and chauvinistic character of the religion of Judaism, which repudiates every form of concession with the pluralism of the modern world.[5][6]

Usage by anti-Zionists

The book has also been controversial because Prinz became a prominent leader in the World Zionist Organization.[7] It has accordingly been cited by anti-Zionists as proof that Zionism contains some arguably fascist and racist elements in it, and that it would have no problem with collaborating with the Nazi leadership in order to achieve its overall political goals. [8][9][10]

Subsequent defense of Prinz

Defenders of Prinz say that while he may have been naive at first, he was also a vocal opponent to Nazism. They contrast this with those who did not see the coming danger and add that he saw some ideas as useful only in limited context at best.[11]

References

  1. ^ Wir Juden, by Joachim Prinz
  2. ^ Reflections on Zionism From a Dissident Jew
  3. ^ Ibid
  4. ^ N. Glaser, Some of my Best Friends are Nazis, New York, Jewish Guardian, Volume 2, Number 2.
  5. ^ Shahak, Israel. Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight Of Three Thousand Years, 1994
  6. ^ David Duke, Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question, 2003, chapter 22
  7. ^ Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, 1983
  8. ^ Wir Juden (We jews)
  9. ^ Francis R. Nicosia, Zionism and anti-semitism in Nazi Germany, 2008, p. 93
  10. ^ Zionism and Anti-Semitism: A Strange Alliance Through History
  11. ^ Ben Halpern, A clash of heroes : Brandeis, Weizmann, and American Zionism, 1987

See also