Echoes of An Infamous Anti-Semitic Jersey Past Are Heard in A New Report

This week the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) published its annual report on Anti-Semitic incidents in the Garden State. The results, as reported in many of our area’s papers, are mixed. While it is true that an overwhelming majority of Jewish people living in New Jersey go about their daily lives without having to face this historic scourge, still, 78 incidents occurred in 2013. According to the ADL, these incidents involved acts of vandalism, assault and threats. 

Racism and discrimination in all their perverse forms are bad, but ‘modern’ Anti-Semitism is its own kind of historical nemesis. I’ve been in education for over a decade, and I can honestly tell you, most New Jerseyans, despite our state’s Holocaust awareness requirement, fail understand the danger of organized Anti-Semitism to humanity in particular, and it’s long history in New Jersey (of all places!). It’s worth a retelling.

Medieval anti-Semitism is rooted in the Christian Bible, which has been interpreted as blaming Jews for the conspiracy to arrest and kill Jesus. Much of this hatred was fed to Europeans over the centuries by the Catholic and later Luther-inspired Protestant Churches. To be fair, this belief in collective Jewish guilt has been formally renounced by the Roman Catholic Church and most Protestant Churches. Over the past three decades, in fact, the Papacy has gone to great lengths to embrace good Jewish-Catholic relations through Papal Synagogue visits and various edicts. I do not think that I would be inaccurate in stating that, at least in New Jersey, if any Christian priest or preacher got up on next Sunday morning and told his or her congregation that Jews were “Christ Killers” the parishioners would simply walk out, throw the preacher out, or both. But this kind of anti-Semitism isn’t what motivates modern day Jew haters anyway.

Modern, formerly "respectable” Anti-Semitism is not ancient. It’s not even German. It’s not from the Arab world and it had nothing to do with the Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades. It wasn’t born in the desert or amongst some maniacal civilization. It emerged, largely, from one of the most cosmopolitan centers of European civilization, from a city that still prides itself on its Baroque architecture, its cobblestone streets, and its sumptuous coffeehouses. Modern-day Anti-Semitism was born in Vienna, Austria, between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I.

These people, whoever they are – be they punks, White Supremacists, or Klansman, who are going around New Jersey committing acts of hatred are believers, for the most part, in this kind of anti-Semitism. Though Modern Anti-Semitism’s origins are a bit complex, the movement really crystalized and gained respect and electoral power in Turn-of-The-Century, cosmopolitan Vienna. It was there that, in the effort to gain votes and create some kind of national identity out of a diverse population, leaders pointed to the Jews as a common enemy. These anti-Semites stipulated that Jews, both religious and secular, were a cancer on humanity. These people preached, to great success, that Jews, through their achievements in the professions, were climbing to the top of their fields in a conspiratorial plan. This “plan,” was to be executed at the ‘right’ moment, on some kind of international basis, when Jews would strike to enslave and degrade all Christians. The conspiracy theory took several forms, but this was the most common one. In the meanwhile, most Anti-Semites said, Jews, by increasing their power and influence, were out to make the lives of Christians impoverished and marginal.

The moment of “respectable crystallization,” happened with the election of one of the great urban mayors of the early 20^th century: Dr. Karl Lueger. Today Austrians like to forget about his intense anti-Semitism, as he was responsible for much of the modernization of Vienna. But at the time, Lueger’s intense hatred for the Jewish people – who comprised of a sizable minority of Vienna itself – was well known. Lueger used his tremendous oratory and persuasive powers to convince city voters that Jews were the main problem. In 1907, a few years before his death, Lueger told one reporter:

“A Jew must remember that neither Germany, nor Austria, nor Poland is his land. He must remember that wherever he may be, he is a stranger to the native population…I do not care about the welfare of the Jews. If their life here is miserable, let them go away.”

Today any big city mayor who made such a statement would be branded as crazy…insane. But these were the words of one of the most popular, elected politicians in the civilized world, and his words would not go unheeded. Under Lueger’s rule, Jews would be discriminated against, publicly assaulted, ridiculed and pushed out of organizations of all kinds. But his admirers were many, including one down-on-his-luck, failed artist and frequent inhabitant of the city’s homeless shelters and rooming houses named Adolf Hitler.

Now wait just a second. I thought this was a blog about New Jersey? What does an infamous Austrian mayor who died in 1910 have anything to do with anti-Semitism in, say, Newark or the Jersey Shore?

The respectability that Lueger gave to such hatred had transatlantic consequences, and this influence spread quickly. How quickly? He died in 1910; within a decade his organized, articulate anti-Jewish rhetoric would assist the growth of two of New Jersey’s most infamous – and powerful – hate groups: the Klan and the Nazis.

The Anti-Semitic Klan, partly due to the ‘respectability’ that Lueger and others had given the hatred of Jews and Judaism, spread rapidly here. Klan groups and “klaverns” organized by the thousands and the repressive organization established its headquarters in Newark. Amazing as the sight would be today, during holiday parades in several New Jersey towns and cities, Klan members marched by the hundreds – even the thousands – to promote their nefarious cause. Their organization published newsletters and newspapers and endorsed candidates running for local and state offices. 

The Klan held huge ceremonies in the summertime, particularly at the Shore. One New York Times article claims that a July 1924 rally near Long Branch drew 20,000 supporters. The Klan participated in open, publiziced acts of terrorism. In April of 1922 they burned a huge cross on top of Paterson’s Garrett Mountain that was visible throughout much of Passaic County. While publicly promoting itself as another civic organization, Klansmen terrorized Jews, Catholics and immigrants through assaults and even bombings. Amazing right? Yes, it happened right here, in New Jersey. And it wasn’t over.

The Klan’s national power faded in the late 1920’s due to a variety of factors, one being a major murder scandal involving its Grand Wizard. The movement’s deterioration was reflected in New Jersey as well. But by the early 1930’s, Anti-Semitism was back in the Garden State and in a big, terrifying way.

In the years before the Second World War, New Jersey was home to a major

New Jersey Nazi Camp, Andover, 1938

Nazi movement that called itself “The Bund.” Like its evil twin in Germany, New Jersey’s Nazis dressed up in brown uniforms, held gatherings in beer halls, and established their own “base camps” in places like Andover. Yes, I am not kidding here. In the mid-1930’s, there was a Nazi camp, with real, goose-stepping, Hitler saluting, anti-Jewish stormtroopers, in Sussex County.

Area residents, like my grandmother who lived in Irvington at the time, grew concerned and frightened. When a collection of Nazi organizations from New Jersey and New York sold out Madison Square Garden for a rally in the mid-1930’s, the movement was on the borderline of – and its frightening to say – respectability. I would like to report that it was the outrages of the Nazis in Germany that led to the Jersey Bund’s decline, and that is frequently taught, but it was more likely the efforts of the state and Federal governments to squash the movement that probably brought on its end. And, of course, The War.

So here we are again, sort of, but on a much smaller basis. The Neo-Nazis or the Anti-Semites or whomever you want to call them are in our presence, but they’re not respectable. The average New Jersey resident, of course, knows from our present perspective what these kinds of ideas lead to: violence, mass death, collective sadism…etc. We’re all decent people, right? We’ll continue to work together as a diverse community towards the future. Yes, we’ll have our disagreements, but this is all our land. We still believe in those ideals…don’t we?

Man, I hope so. But the ADL’s report of 78 Jersey-based incidents in 2013 does shake my faith. A little bit.   

Rutgers Shines A Light on Land and Power

What is a public university? When is it at its very, very best?

New Jersey’s universities have taken quite a beating over the past few years. Budget cuts. Bad press. Administrators basically declaring war on their full-time faculty, as we’ve seen at Kean University. Full-time faculty scholars being replaced by overburdened and underpaid adjuncts.

But Rutgers, our venerated state university, our colonial treasure, continues to step up to the challenge. It continues in its tireless efforts to inform not only its own students but the residents of New Jersey as a whole. Its ongoing efforts to reach out to alumni and everyone with outstanding and fascinating public events need to be noted, because it demonstrates the university’s dedication to the vital role it plays as community educator.

A good example took place just last night on the university’s beautiful Douglass Campus. On a gray afternoon, under the threat of an impending snowstorm that today has shut the entire northeast down, a genuine stream of sunshine shone through.

Rutgers has dozens and dozens of academic departments. Yes, there are the ‘standards’ like English, History, Biology, etc. But there are a tremendous number of more specific divisions and institutes dedicated to expanding knowledge and providing professionals with training and preparation for a lifetime of productivity. Yesterday afternoon, two in particular stood out: the Center for Cultural Analysis and The Department of Landscape Architecture.

Normally, I would not associate these two lines of study with each other, but at an outstanding and fascinating presentation co-sponsored by both divisions I learned a lot, a lot. And like all good presentations, it raised more questions than it answered.

The presentation, titled Is Green Always Good? Landscapes of Division and Silence, was delivered by Dr. Anita Bakshi, a graduate of Cambridge University. It concerned how, in many urban locales, different ethnic, religious and state groups use landscape architecture and the laws that regulate parks to change the land and embolden themselves at the expense of their opponents.

She brought up a few examples that were just completely fascinating and demanded further investigation. One concerned ongoing events in Jerusalem, the other in Cyprus.

Bakishi began her presentation with an interesting historical tale. Under British occupation in the 1920’s, many British leaders sought to transform Jerusalem from a densely populated, gritty city to an “ideal” holy site, surrounded by parklands, rolling fields and handsome pathways. Many British officials during this period were apparently unhappy that the Holy City appeared, well, unholy-like. It was too busy and disorganized, and its appearance defied the proper Western expectation of a handsome, ancient center of faith. So they made a plan – the British love plans – to terraform, or completely change the areas surrounding the Old City. From their point of view, it would amount to an improvement, but if you were one of the tens of thousands of people living in the areas slated for “improvement,” you were out of luck.

After the Israeli annexation of the city in 1967, the Israeli government picked up where the British left off. Indeed, the Israeli government cleared away large quarters of the city, from densely populated zones to open, unused areas, to create parkland and public space. Today, this parkland is so well fashioned, so expertly designed, that there is absolutely no way for the casual visitor to realize what stood before.

Now to be fair, I’m not going to argue whether or not the Israelis had a right to transform their national capital so dramatically. These kinds of disruptive, urban projects have occurred all throughout modern history, and continue to cause controversy today in places like Mainland China. Paris was a medieval, filthy, dismal mess until Napoleon III paved wide boulevards through whole neighborhoods in the mid-1800’s. Hong Kong’s worst crime and gang-controlled slum, called the “Walled City,” was demolished in the 1990’s and few in that great city miss it. Manhattan’s own ghastly neighborhood, the infamous “Five Corners” quarter near Chinatown, has been thankfully replaced. Cities are places of harsh, steady change. The old is frequently torn down to make way for the new. The past makes way for the present. The world belongs to the living.

But in her studies, Bakshi reported that she noticed some strange and curious elements in recent Israeli plans. New parks cut through Arab neighborhoods, with entrances connecting Jewish neighborhoods and fences along the borders of the Arab zones. Homes were being condemned and bulldozed without the usual hearings and studies, since under Israeli law such legal formalities are either not required or streamlined when an area is declared national parkland. Upon looking at an overall map of all the projects, it seemed that the city was being divided up formally, in almost an apartheid-like (my words, not hers) fashion, into near or totally isolated neighborhoods divided by irregular and winding greenbelts. Additionally, some Arab neighborhoods are in the process of losing ready pedestrian and automobile access to Jerusalem’s markets and thus, are forced to shop and sell in smaller Bethlehem. “Regardless of what your opinion may be,” she stated (and I’m paraphrasing here) “on the causes of this, these physical changes have created new facts-on-the-ground. They literally affect the lives of residents every day.”

But Bakshi was not delivering some anti-Israeli academic rant. She absolutely stated that these developments and their patterns have raised questions, and she was just pointing them out, putting them in the sunlight for further examination. Basically, she was doing her job as an academic. She was making queries, demanding new knowledge…

Flag Mountain, Cyprus. Not a friendly advertisement.

Bakshi then turned to Cypress. That Mediterranean island is presently split, and has been for decades, between a Turkish-dominated northern state and a Greek-dominated southern state. The irregular, artificial border twists and turns through the rocky island, and even bisects Nicosia, the capital city. She then projected a strange picture on the screen. In one bizarre area of the borderland on the Turkish side, the northern state has fashioned some of the highlands into a gigantic crescent and star. This Muslim feature is even illuminated at night and visible in plain sight, on a 24-hour basis, to the thousands of Greeks right across the border. Bakshi did not make any commentary on what she thought of the landscape; she didn’t need to. The point was more than obvious. And it raised questions, so many questions. What was the point of such an effort? What kind of message did the Turks want to send to their Greek neighbors? What kind of signal does it send to people everywhere when land is so dramatically refashioned?

Bakshi brought up other examples, as in divided Bosnia where Christians and Muslims also compete with gigantic monuments and architectural restorations in their rival efforts to claim the heritage of the land.

Such a fascinating presentation. So many questions. When it was time for questions and commentary, I brought up that such terraforming and refashioning of urban areas along ethnic lines had occurred right here in North America. I pointed out that Montreal, for the first half of the 20^th century, was largely an English-speaking city with streets and parks with English names. When the pro-French Parti Quebecois took over the Province’s government in the 1980’s, it passed laws that resulted in the de facto “Francoization” of the entire city. Street names were changed, signs torn down and replaced, monuments relocated, whole environments changed. Over a half million English speakers, reacting to a variety of new pro-French laws, fled the city for Toronto and the Canadian West. Today, Americans visitors to Montreal are presented with an almost totally French city, a “Second Paris.” But historically it just isn’t factual. Before the 1970’s, the city resembled New York more than Paris. But does it matter anymore? Is physical transformation destiny? Do such changes obliterate memory and minority claims to land and sights? So hard to say…so debatable…

Praise again goes out to the two Rutgers divisions that sponsored this fascinating talk, those being the Center for Cultural Analysis and the Department of Landscape Architecture. I’ll never look at Home Depot’s gardening section the same way again.