It Is No Dream: The Life Of Theodor Herzl

- The Jewish question still exists.

It would be foolish to deny it.

It is a remnant of the middle ages

which civilized nations do not even yet

seem to be able to shake off try as they will.

Attacks in Parliament, in assemblies, in the press,

in the pulpit, in the street

become daily more numerous.

In countries where we have lived for centuries

we are still cried down as strangers.

Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us.

No nation on Earth has survived such struggles

and sufferings as we have gone through.

Distress binds us together,

and thus united we suddenly discover our strength.

Yes we are strong enough to form a state,

and indeed a model state.

We possess all human and material resources

necessary for the purpose.

The idea which I have developed in

this pamphlet is a very old one.

It is the restoration of the Jewish state.

The world resounds with outcries against the Jews,

and these outcries have awakened the slumbering idea.

- These words were written in 1895

almost 120 years ago.

They were part of a pamphlet entitled

"The Judenstaat" or "The Jewish State".

The author was a 36 year old Viennese journalist,

and playwright named Theodor Herzl.

In 1895 what Theodor Herzl was proposing

seemed, even to his supporters, an impossible goal.

But to all who insisted it was a fantasy

Theodor Herzl had this to say

if you will it it is no dream.

- Herzl was the first name that I can remember

because the king wrote the truth.

I mean

it was a King without a kingdom,

and a prince without a people.

But it touched the most important thing in Jewish life.

And he said faith,

spirit,

flames, legend.

And it's an honorable story.

- In 1894, Theodor Herzl was living in Paris,

and working as the bureau chief for Vienna's

Neue Freie Presse,

one of Europe's most respected newspapers.

At the moment the big story making headlines

was the criminal trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus

who'd been arrested on a charge of high treason

for selling military secrets to the Germans.

Dreyfus who came from a prominent Jewish family

that had been living in France for generations

insisted he was innocent.

His supporters maintained that he had been framed

by a group of anti-Semitic officers.

In the days following Dreyfus's arrest

Theodor Herzl, like much of the French public,

believed that he was guilty.

The evidence indicates that

Dreyfus has really committed the ignominious act.

- But as the military trial unfolded

at the Ecole Militaire in Paris throughout December 1894

Herzl's opinion about Dreyfus's guilt began to change.

He became completely convinced that Dreyfus was innocent,

and was being unfairly prosecuted because he was Jewish.

Despite the fact that in 1791 France became

the first country in the world

to emancipate its Jewish population

anti-Semitism was surging among the French

in the years leading up to the Dreyfus case.

In fact, anti-Semitic violence had been

spreading throughout Europe starting

in the 1870s in Germany and Austria.

Then hundreds of Jews were killed

in pogroms in Russia, and the Ukraine.

The situation began turning against French Jews in 1882

with the collapse of the L'Union Generale

the Catholic bank founded with the

blessings of Pope Leo the Thirteenth.

The faithful had invested heavily in L'Union Generale.

Both the aristocracy and the middle class

had their money in the bank

upon the advice of their priests.

When the L'Union Generale collapsed

in the 1882 stock market crash

rich and poor French Catholics were economically devastated.

And the Jews were blamed for it all.

When rival banks, including the house of Rothschild,

came through the crash relatively unscathed.

Edward Drumont, an unknown writer,

soon made his reputation on a two volume book

entitled La France Juive, or Jewish France.

An immediate best seller Drumont's book

exposed what he maintained was

the evil power of Jewish finance.

In the wake of this success Drumont

created the National Anti-Semitic League

dedicated to fighting the clandestine,

and merciless conspiracy of Jewish finance

which jeopardizes daily the welfare,

honor, and security of France.

In 1892 Drummond founded La Libre Parole

which became one of the country's most popular newspapers.

It led a campaign to drive Jewish

officers out of the French army.

After it was discovered that military secrets

had been passed to Germany from a

member of the French general staff

Dreyfus fell under suspicion because he was Jewish,

and disliked by his fellow officers.

But after his arrest no evidence could be found

linking him to the act.

At the Ecole Militaire the officers in charge

of Dreyfus's investigation fabricated

a so-called secret file proving Dreyfus's guilt.

Military authorities then ordered

Dreyfus's immediate court martial.

The proceedings were held in private,

and the secret file kept from the defense.

Throughout the trial proceedings

Drumont continued to fan the flames of anti-Semitism.

The French public took to the streets

not only against Dreyfus

but also the French Jewish community.

Not far from Theodor Herzl's hotel room

en rue Cambon there were nightly demonstrations

in the Place de la Concorde.

Through his windows he could hear the crowd screaming

death to the Jews.

Where was this happening?

Herzl asked himself.

Where?

In France.

In Republican, modern, civilized France.

100 years after the declaration of the rights of man.

Though what troubled

him even more profoundly were the events

that occurred after Dreyfus was pronounced guilty

at the end of December 1894,

and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island.

Herzl was one of the few journalists

allowed to witness Dreyfus's public

degredation in

January 1895.

It was a bitterly cold January morning.

It happened to be

the Sabbath.

Dreyfus was marched around the Ecole Militaire

in front of the garrison of troops.

He had his uniform, all the buttons on his uniform

were ripped off by this giant of a man

who descended from his horse,

and publicly humiliated Dreyfus.

And the Parisian mob who were behind the railings

that are watching this scene, several thousand people,

they are screaming down with the traitor.

And there are also cries of

death to the Jew.

(speaking foreign language), which come from

this almost hysterical

mob who were baying

for Dreyfus's blood.

Herzl is in the journalist box.

He notes that, twice, as Dreyfus is marched around

he stops where he sees the journalists,

and he shouts I am innocent.

You are convicting an innocent man.

Vive le France!

Long live France.

Vive l'armee.

Long live the army.

That night in a state of

what he would later call strange agitation

Herzl wrote his dispatch for the Neue Freie Presse.

In Vienna the newspaper censored the report

changing his account of the mob

shouting death to the Jews to death to the Judas.

In a later edition the Neue Freie Presse

changed it even further to death to the traitors.

Herzl's editors, themselves Jews,

were worried that the truth would inspire

similar chants to occur in the streets of Vienna.

Although he tried Herzl could

not shake the scenes of the trial,

and the anti-Semitic demonstrations from his mind.

He woke up to the French newspapers

editorializing that Dreyfus's protests of innocence

were even further examples of Jewish duplicity.

He became even more disturbed when

a few days later the French National Assembly

introduced legislation that

would ban Jews from public service.

It was defeated by less than 70 votes,

and news from Vienna, where his family was living,

added to his anxiety.

Anti-Semitic factions had reached a

majority status in the Austrian parliament.