Page 36 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

Among the princes the Jews were able to make themselves
indispensable, and often tried to do so, in that they advanced money
to them for military undertakings and promoted their lavishness and
liberality in the same way, but extracted high interests and privileges.
That is why the kings also protected the Jews everywhere and the
rage of the peoples must have already risen very high before they
gave way to the pressure for the restriction of Jewish preferential
rights. Often they protected the Jews militarily as, for example, in
Navarre, where an insult made against a Jew was punished in such
a way as if it had been made against a Spanish grandee; where the
Jew could not be arrested for financial matters; where he was freed
of all taxes imposed on goods. In Tudela, King Sancho allotted (1 1 70)
the fortress to the Jews as their domicile for their greater security.
In addition, the Jews had to pay no tithe contribution on goods that
came to their possession through inheritance; if a Jew were to owe
something to a Christian, the Christian had to present two witnesses
"ofwhich one however had to be a Jew". 42 In 1255 Tudela rose up,
was pacified with difficulty and received a new constitution, until
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the old swindle was started once again.
The kings of Navarre were also finally impoverished; they
came home to find no dinner, they could not pay the grains bought
from the Jews, etc. Now, if one thinks that the Jews would have had
the least consideration for the difficult position of their patrons who
admittedly stood up for Jewish rights as if for their own, one is
greatly mistaken.
They were able to make themselves still more
"indispensable". "The interests raised by the Jews, we cannot deny
it, seem to have reached an immoderate height", admits Kayserling
rather sadly. "Everything was given up as pawns: the farmer gave

42
Kayserling, op.cit., pp. 16,18, 19.
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The demands of the council to re-establish the old city laws show, according to
Kayserling, "clearly the attempt to force the Jews out of their rights and to assume
power over them". This sentence shows once again that it is impossible even for
such an important historian as Kayserling to perceive that it was entirely self-
evident that foreigners had to be ranked beneath the citizens and not arrogantly
demand a special treatment everywhere. The Jewish greed is a demonic driving
force against which even the "good" Jew is powerless.

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