Exodus - Leon Uris [126]
In the bitter winter of 1894 Alfred Dreyfus stood in disgrace in a courtyard. In a ceremony of public ostracism the epaulets were cut from his shoulders, his cheeks were slapped, his sword broken, and the buttons pulled from his cloak. He was denounced above an ominous drum roll as a traitor to France. As he was taken off to begin life in a penal hell he cried, “I am innocent! Long live France!”
Alfred Dreyfus was a Jew.
The dormant disease of anti-Semitism erupted in France. Goaded on by Edouard Drumont, the arch Jew hater, mobs of Frenchmen ran through the streets of Paris screaming the age-old cry—“Death to the Jews!”
In later years the great novelist Emile Zola took up the case of Dreyfus. In an open letter to the President of France he branded the horrible miscarriage of justice in immortal prose.
A certain man witnessed Dreyfus’ hour of disgrace in the Paris courtyard. Although Dreyfus was freed, this man could not forget the cry, “I am innocent!” Moreover he could not forget the Parisian mobs screaming, “Death to the Jews!” It haunted him day and night.
The man who could not forget was Theodor Herzl.
Theodor Herzl was also a Jew. He was born in Hungary, but his well-to-do family moved to Austria and he grew up in Vienna. His training in formal Judaism was superficial. He and his family firmly believed in the prevalent theories of assimilation.
Herzl was a brilliant essayist, playwright, journalist. Like so many creative men of his school he was hounded by an incessant restlessness. He was married to a good woman but one completely incapable of giving him the compassion and understanding he needed. Fortunately for Herzl his restless ventures were well financed by a generous family allowance.
Herzl drifted to Paris and eventually became Paris correspondent for the powerful Viennese New Free Press. He was relatively happy. Paris was a carefree city and his job was good and there was always that wonderful intellectual exchange.
What had brought him to Paris, really? What unseen hand guided him into that courtyard on that winter’s day? Why Herzl? He did not live or think as a devout Jew, yet when he heard the mobs beyond the wall shout, “Death to the Jews!” his life and the life of every Jew was changed forever.
Theodor Herzl pondered and thought, and he decided that the curse of anti-Semitism could never be eradicated. So long as one Jew lived—there would be someone to hate him. From the depths of his troubled mind Herzl wondered what the solution could be, and he came to a conclusion—the same conclusion that a million Jews in a hundred lands had come to before him—the same conclusion that Pinsker had written about in his pamphlet about auto-emancipation. Herzl reasoned that only if the Jews established themselves again as a nation would all Jews of all lands finally exist as free men. They had to have a universal spokesman—they had to command respect and dignity as equals through a recognized government.
The paper in which he set down these ideas was called “The Jewish State.”
Galvanized into action by this sudden calling, Herzl drove himself unmercifully to gather support for his ideas. He went to those enormously wealthy philanthropists who were supporting the colonies of Jews in Palestine. They ridiculed the Jewish state idea as nonsense. Charity was one thing—as Jews they gave to less fortunate Jews—but talk of rebuilding a nation was madness.
But the Jewish state idea caught on and spread through a hundred lands. Herzl’s idea was neither novel nor unique, but his dynamic drive would not let it die.
Important support began to gather around him. Max Nordau, a transplanted Hungarian in Paris with an international reputation as a writer, rallied to his support, as did Wolfsohn in Germany and De Haas in England. Many Christians in high places also expressed their approval of the idea.
In the year 1897 a convention of leading Jews throughout the world was called in the town of Basle, Switzerland. It was, indeed, a parliament of world Jewry. Nothing like it had happened since the second