The Wrath of the World

Diversity Macht Frei
October 29, 2018

I found this message quite poignant. It was sent by an Israeli nationalist to a left-wing Israeli MP, Tamar Zandberg.

It reminded me of a passage in the book “An Empire of their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood”.

In the summer of 1934, just before Sinclair’s campaign, Maurice Rapf, the teenage son of MGM executive Harry Rapf, convinced his father to let him tour the Soviet Union. In Russia Maurice was struck by the ubiquitous anti-Nazi propaganda – “Keep the Nazi slop out of the Soviet garden” – read the caption of one poster with a red fist poised against a Nazi storm trooper over a brown wall – and by what he saw as the Soviet tolerance towards Jews. “Speak Yiddish! This is the Soviet Union. You don’t have to hide it,” said one Russian Jew when the American tourists tried conversing with him in German.

By the time he returned to Hollywood, Maurice had seen the future and been radicalized. “My father was very sad,” he recalled, “but he couldn’t counter what I had to say. After all, I had been there, and he was very respectful. But he sent me to see a series of his associates and friends and let them talk to me … and I had some really hair-raising experiences.” Harry Warner, who had once been Harry Rapf’s partner, was barely civil. “I don’t want to talk to no goddamn Communist. Don’t forget you’re a Jew. Jewish Communists are going to bring down the wrath of the world on the rest of the Jews.”

Source: “An Empire of their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood” by Neal Gabler