And Speaking of the Future of Humanity......

I went yesterday mid-day to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, because I wanted to see if their book store had a copy of the book containing the James McDonald diaries. They seem to have been sold out.

But I did look at two of the special exhibits at the museum, the one on the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and the one on the children of the Lodz ghetto.

I have to give credit to the Holocaust Museum. Their designers may be turning out the best-designed museum exhibits in the city, and perhaps consistently. Both of these exhibits are extremely well done.

I had wanted to see the Protocols exhibit. It consists of nothing more than about 20 versions of the Protocols, published in different languages at different times, and several refutation pieces, placed into window-like settings on a series of very busy temporary poster-walls, nicely arranged. The poster-walls contain, as background, photos and newspaper stories, and as insets, material to describe the history and uses of the Protocols

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which continue to get reproduced, distributed and sold today throughout the world (particularly in certain Arab countries) and on the Internet, are, as everyone really knows, fabricated fiction. I am sure that this is known to those to reproduce, translate, publish and distribute.

So, why does distribution continue? And why does fiction become, in some minds, fact?

All I can think of is that the Protocols pick up on something that many people generally believe and fear, that the Jews internationally conspire to control the world. If this is what the Jews do, this is one way that they might do it. And since there is no proof that they do it in any other way, this must be the way. Therefore, this fiction becomes historic fact. And, although the protocols are set in time-gone-by, not only historic fact, because the conspiracies of the Jews continue today, and will continue tomorrow.

In other words, the Protocols provide a basis for something that some people believe so strongly, that their rationally required condition of disbelief is suspended, and the false becomes the true.

But this does not normally happen in fiction, does it? People do not think that Harry Potter, or Hamlet, or even the Merchant of Vence is true.

Where is the precedent?

Aha. It is the bible. It is the Koran. It is that religious writing which is deemed true, irrespective of whether or not it is historically proven, or even historically possible.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a religious text.

(As to the exhibit on the children of the Lodz ghetto, it proceeds chronologically through photos, writings, remembrances, documents, videos and memorabilia. It is an attractive exhibit, it is an educational exhibit, the exhibits are placed so you can see them, the writings are placed so you can read them, there is plenty of room, the are sufficient seats at the videos that groups can be accommodated.

The treatment of Mordecai Rumkowski, the Nazi's selected leader of the ghetto is very interesting. In fact, he is in some ways the focus of the exhibit. Good guy? Awful guy? The exhibit does not really take a position. What did the ghetto dwellers think of him? Remember, that the individual with a similar position in Vienna, Rabbi Mermelstein, was hated by the community; was he any different?)