‘THE JEW ACCUSED’

Steve Oney’s review of Albert Lindemann’s “The Jew Accused” (April 5) was, putting it kindly, one of the more bizarre examples of senseless drivel I have had the misfortune to see in a long time. I certainly never expected to see its like in the pages of a reputable publication like The Times.

Let me see if I understood it correctly. Anti-Jewish feeling is “precipitated . . . by actual grievances against the Jews.” What are these “actual grievances” that made it difficult “for Europeans and to a lesser degree Americans not to have perceived them (the Jews) as threatening”?

Well, it varies. In France and Austria it was not knowing their place, integrating into society, having many children, and being successful. In Russia, on the other hand, it was the opposite--the reluctance to integrate, being “willfully resistant to social and political intercourse with either peasant or prince.”

What then is a Jew to do? Both successful integration and willful alienation are valid reasons, in the reviewer’s opinion, for anti-Jewish feelings.

The reviewer tells us that “If Jews were persecuted in the courtroom merely because they were Jews, then each time a Jew was arraigned at the bar, an atrocity would follow.” He misses two points. One is that the three Jews in question were persecuted precisely because they were Jews; had they lived identical lives and not been Jewish, their cases would have never been brought to trial. Secondly, the time did indeed come soon enough when all Jews were tried, found guilty and sentenced to death by virtue of being born Jews. This was called the Nazi Holocaust.

I have not read the book in question and I do not really know whether the ideas expressed were the author’s or the reviewer’s, but in any case they were repugnant to any clear-thinking person. I am certain that the review--and probably the book--could be used in a Russian translation by the antisemites in Russia who are currently distributing the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”.

I resent the implication that Jews are responsible for antisemitism, that they should take care not to succeed, not to increase in numbers, not to protest antisemitism for fear of incurring the justified wrath of non-Jews, and not accuse their persecutors of being evil. I am amazed at your callous disregard of the most elementary rules of logic, fairness, common sense and tolerance for others in permitting this piece of unadulterated drivel to be included in your usually quite admirable section.

SI FRUMKIN, Chairman, Southern California Council for Soviet Jews, STUDIO CITY