Page 106 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

through the plundering of the inhabitants carried out with demonic
energy throughout the social structure.
If philo-Jewish scholars and, naturally, all Jews throw the
entire blame of these upheavals of national life onto the kings and
maintain that they had only used the poor Jew, taken away his money
from him, but thereby forced him to live on usury, it is of course far
from my intention to represent the kings as innocent angels. They
needed money for wars and the maintenance of the court and were
not especially selective in their methods of obtaining such for
themselves. That the Jew, who always disposed of money, seemed
to them very welcome many times can be well believed even if it is
not expressly proven.
In the life ofthe young nations of that time things fermented
and brewed everywhere, great movements of the wildly fermenting
brew swept through the world; wars broke out, but at the same time
formed the national personalities. Every prince defended himself
with his life against another until a greater united them both under
his sceptre.
In these times, when it was a matter mainly of national
existence, one cannot achieve much with moralising judgements,
and to want to grant absolute impunity in the case of every turmoil
to the small minority of Jews alone would also be asking too much.
Nevertheless, even if we could quite calmly consider the prince
constantly in need ofmoney as a tempter ofthe Jew, the fact however
remains that it was precisely Jews who always played the above
described role of usurer.
To the one-sided opinion that the Jews could have done
nothing else but conduct usury can be opposed the simple question
why they did not turn, as Louis le Hutin 167 and Louis IX had wished
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to force them to, to manufacture and agriculture. Then there would
have been no Jewish question also.
If we leave aside here every moral evaluation, we must
indeed understand all the events repeating themselves constantly,
with the same results, as necessities of Nature that formed

[Louis X (1289-1316) was known as "le Hutin", the quarreller.]
th
The prohibition to own land dates only from the 13 century.
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