Uncovered: Churchill's Warnings About The 'Hebrew Bloodsuckers'

Unpublished article from 1937 suggests 'aloof' Jews to blame for antagonism towards them

Taken from the Independent, UK, 11 March 2007
By Paul Bignell

Winston Churchill suggested Jewish people were "partly responsible for the antagonism" that saw them branded "Hebrew bloodsuckers", according to an article made public for the first time today.

The 1937 document, "How the Jews Can Combat Persecution", was unearthed by Dr Richard Toye, a Cambridge University historian. Written three years before Churchill became Prime Minister, the article has apparently lain unnoticed in the Churchill archives at Cambridge since the early months of the Second World War.

The article argues that "the wickedness of the persecutors" was not the sole reason for the ill-treatment of Jews down the ages. Churchill criticised the "aloofness" of Jewish people from wider society and urged them to make the effort to integrate themselves."

Dr Toye said: "I nearly fell off my chair when I found the article. It appears to have been overlooked. I think a lot of people thought that the file it was in only contained copies of articles that had already been published. It was certainly quite a shock to read some of these things and it is obviously at odds with the traditional idea we have of Churchill."

The article was intended for the US publication Liberty but withdrawn when another magazine Churchill wrote for objected to him supplying a rival.

In the piece Churchill criticised Jewish employers in the clothing trade and their use of sweated labour. Because refugee Jews escaping the Nazi regime in Germany were willing to work for lower wages, this was in his view "bad citizenship" because it forced English workers out of jobs - and "bad policy" as it created anti-Semitism. Churchill says: "The central fact which dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew is that the Jew is 'different'. He looks different. He thinks differently. He has a different tradition and background."

He then goes on to criticise Jewish moneylenders: "Every Jewish moneylender recalls Shylock and the idea of the Jews as usurers. And you cannot reasonably expect a struggling clerk or shopkeeper, paying 40 or 50 per cent interest on borrowed money to a 'Hebrew Bloodsucker', to reflect that almost every other way of life was closed to the Jewish people."

Elsewhere in the article Churchill is sympathetic towards Jewish people and clearly disapproves of their persecution: "The Jew is, as a rule, a good citizen. He is sober, industrious and law-abiding... The Jews are suffering from persecutions, cruel and relentless."

Dr Toye said: "Although Churchill lapsed into some extremely unfortunate stereotypes, he did so in the context of trying to be helpful - trying to help the Jews avoid persecution. But unfortunately he kind of blames the Jews themselves in part."

However, Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill's biogra-pher, says there is another reason for the anti-Semitic language: "Churchill had a ghostwriter who was a member of the Mosleyite party. This article was the only serious subject the ghostwriter was asked to tackle, in which he went over the top in the use of his language."