Page 107 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg

consequences from the contact of the people of Europe and Asia
with the Jewish people wherever they were not consciously
restrained, just as they form them today and will form them
tomorrow. Since the last expulsion, the Jews lived in France not in
closed communities but scattered throughout the land.
With the conquest of Alsace, however, they received a
manifold increase and soon the Jewish question stood once again as
the order ofthe day. Through the intrigues ofthe royal court purveyor,
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Cerfbeer, over many years, through a trial initiated by him against
the city of Strasbourg, during which the Jew was able to hide behind
the person ofthe king, the paths were prepared already for the posing
of the question of the emancipation of the Jews.
After the storming of the Bastille, naturally, more levers
were set in motion. At the Constituent Assembly they dared, to be
sure not directly - since they awaited from the Alsace deputies the
most unpleasant truths regarding the plundering by the Jews - but
first secured their back through a decision of the Paris city
administration to pronounce itself in favour of the abolition of the
Jewish laws.
Mirabeau, 170 who was fully indebted to the Jews, had
already for a long time been obliged to them. The already mentioned
Cerfbeer had approached Moses Mendelssohn with a request to use
his great reputation even among the Christians to champion the
emancipation of the Jews through a written work.
But the latter did not consider it practical and did what many
of the tribe of Judah before and after him did: he pushed forward a
non-Jew as his spokesman, the young Dohm, 171 who then, inspired
by Mendelssohn, wrote an "epoch-making" work on the reform of
[Herz Cerfbeer (1 730-1 793) was a French Jewish contractor to the French army
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and philanthropist. Louis XVI granted him special permission to dwell in Strasbourg
in spite ofthe laws prohibiting Jews from settlement in that city. Cerfbeer established
factories in Strasbourg in which he employed Jews and, through Mendelssohn, got
the support of Christian Wilhelm von Dohm in advocating the betterment of the
condition of the Jews in France.]
170
[Gabriel Riqueti, Count Mirabeau (1749-1791), was a moderate Revolutionary
and Freemason.]
[Christian Wilhelm von Dohm (1751-1820) was a German historian who
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staunchly adv ocated the emancipation of the Jews.]
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