Working-class antisemitism

I am writing to vehemently disagree with the views expressed by Batya Ungar-Sargon in “The working class is Jews’ and Israel’s biggest supporter” (April 12). As a member of the working class, growing up in the slum of Bethnal Green in the East End of London, with my father a cabinet maker, we experienced the full force of working-class antisemitism. It was violent and prevalent, as documented in my autobiographical novel,

In fact it was the kings, princes and aristocracy who protected the Jews in Europe. Once the era of monarchy began to be overthrown, the masses of peoples showed themselves to be virulently antisemitic. Theodor Herzl noted this when he was in Paris reporting on the Dreyfus case. It was the mob of ordinary citizens who were baying for Jewish blood, and it was the intellectual writer Emile Zola who opposed them.

Ordinary working people in Britain, Germany, France and throughout Europe were endemically antisemitic, and most of them cooperated with the Nazi Holocaust. In Eastern Europe and Russia, it was the workers who carried out the pogroms.

There may be a difference between the working classes in America and Europe, but not a sufficiently different culture that it made any significant difference. In Britain, the unions are traditionally antisemitic.

I managed to escape the working class by getting an education at Cambridge University, where I experienced middle class antisemitism. It was more condescending and less violent.

Typically a fellow student would say to me: “Oh, you’re Jewish, how interesting, I’ve never met a Jew before.” In addition, it was difficult to find lodging once the bigoted landladies realized you were a Jew. Still, though all classes have exhibited endemic antisemitism, the working class has been the worst of them all.

JACK COHEN

Beersheba