More on Jewish Over-Representation

            I wrote the article now titled, “What Caused the Holocaust?” in the 1990s.  In 2006 I was about to embark on a new job in a different country.  Consequently, I did not know about a book that came out that year by Yuri Slezkine, called The Jewish Century.  It is good.  I just bought the paper edition, and on the cover it states that it won the National Jewish Book Award from the Jewish Book Council.  I have not yet read it all, but with its stress on Jewish over-representation in the professions in Germany and Eastern Europe before 1933, it reinforces some of the points I made in my holocaust article.

            Later, I plan to write a thorough review of Slezkine’s book, but now will mention just a few points.  On p. 48, “In 1908-11, in Germany…, Jews made up 0.95% of the population... and 31% of the richest families (with a “ratio” of economic over-representation” of 33, the highest anywhere, according to W. E. Rubenstein.)…”  And the Rothschilds were the wealthiest family of the 19^th century “by a wide margin.”

            When discussing capitalism and the Protestant ethic, Slezkine notes on p. 43, “A  Scottish Protestant was not just a pork-eating Jew, as Heine would have it; he was a solitary Jew, a Jew without the people of Israel, the only creature to have been chosen.”  This implies that it may not have been mere aptitude of the individuals that propelled Jews to such success.  Slezkine adds on p. 50 that by 1900 “In large parts of Eastern Europe, virtually the whole ‘middle class’ was Jewish.”

            I do not have time to properly review the book, or even finish reading it now, but later in the year I will return to it.-------Hugh Murray