Two children face European anti-Semitism

The event described in the book O Vous frères humains (O ye Human Brethren). by

French author Albert Cohen took place in Marseille in 1905, on the author’s tenth birthday.

As he was walking home from school he encountered a street vendor around whom a small

crowd had gathered. Fascinated by the objects on sale, the child bought some trinkets with

the money his mother had given him for his birthday. Noticing his dark curly hair and dark

eyes, the vendor proceeded to hurl epithets at him, ‘Dirty Jewboy! We don’t like

bloodsucking Yids here, Shove off.’ etc. Adding insult to injury, the people standing around

him laughed or did nothing.

Anguished and stunned, the boy wandered away and the rest of the book consists of the

thoughts that run through his head, his inability to reconcile the insults he has heard with the

knowledge of his parents’ kindness, the history of the Jews, the biblical injunction to ‘love

thy neighbor,’ compounded by Christianity’s teachings of kindness and love. Worse still, as

he wanders along, the boy comes across slogans such as ‘Death to the Jews,’ and ‘Dirty

Jews,’ scrawled on walls, and these only serve to intensify his confusion and desolation.

Of course, the emphasis at the gathering to mark the liberation of Auschwitz was on the

wholesale massacre of the Jews of Europe.  Albert Cohen points out that the anti-Semitism he encountered as a child, and which came not long after the Dreyfus trial in France, was endemic throughout most of Europe, and eventually led to the Holocaust, which is now known officially in France by the Hebrew word Shoah.

And the anti-Semitism that pervaded Christian Europe even found its way to my ten-year-

old self (some time in the early 1950s), as I lay in hospital in London, with a suspected (but

eventually unconfirmed) case of scarlet fever. No visitors were allowed, though I was able

to receive parcels of sweets and chocolates, and even the occasional much-yearned-for

reading material.

The nurses, many of them Irish, were practical, generally getting on with the job in hand without bestowing great affection on their young patients. My one consolation was being able to listen to the ward radio, with the customary sequence of light music and talk programs broadcast in those days on the BBC’s Light Programme.

One day, the bed nearest the radio became vacant, and I asked Maureen, one of the nurses,

whether I could move there. She helped me with what I thought was a good will. But when I

found that my arm was just too short or the bed too far away for me to reach the radio to

adjust the volume, I asked if it could be moved a bit nearer to me. At that she exploded.

‘You Jews,’ she said. ‘Next thing you’ll want to sit at the right hand of God!’

I had never heard that phrase, had no idea what it meant, but knew instinctively that it was

an insult. I had never been slighted before for being Jewish (or not knowingly, as there were

probably others I was too naïve to recognize as such), and felt totally crushed by what the

nurse had said. Alone in my hospital bed I began to cry, and just could not stop. The

to cry, refusing to answer the doctors’ and nurses’ questions as to the reason for it, as that

was in fact something I was unable to put into words. Screens were put round my bed and

medical staff peered round them at me from time to time. Eventually it was decided that I

should be discharged. And so it was that at last I was able to go home and be reunited with

my family.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this little incident was nothing very grave, though

how a nurse can bring herself to insult a ten-year-old child in hospital escapes me. The age-

old spectre of religious and cultural hatred of Jews, of being castigated for being different,

the myth of their supposedly grasping nature and sense of superiority can– and does – pop

up unexpectedly anywhere at any time. It makes me wonder how many of those world

leaders’ declarations of ‘never again’ and ‘we will never forget’ will stand the test of time.

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson is an author and freelance writer based in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion, Israel.  She may be contacted via dorothea.shefer@sdjewishworld.com