Pierre Birnbaum is one of the most eminent historians of the jewish community in nineteenth and twentieth century in France. He is an ardent apologist for its excesses and a studious magnifier of its woes.
I have always known that Birnbaum was a historical orthodox jewish interpreter of his community’s past, but I was distinctly surprised by his introduction to his book on the jewish ritual murder trial of Raphael Levy. (1)
In said introduction he writes about a ‘strange encounter’ that occurred on 13th February 2001 when Bernadette Lemoine met Pierre-Andre Meyer. Lemoine was the last surviving member of the family of Didier le Moyne, a four year old boy who was brutally murdered in 1669, and Meyer the last surviving descendent of his alleged killer: Raphael Levy.
Lemoine intellectually prostrated herself before Meyer asking for his forgiveness since her family had long believed that Levy did indeed kill her distant relation Le Moyne. She dedicated herself to ‘proving’ that Levy was innocent and wrote a scholarly monograph to this effect. (2) Indeed she goes as far to claim that she saw Levy as a saint-like figure. (3)
Birnbaum’s response to this was as nasty as it is puerile.
He promptly accused her of deliberately conspiring to minimize ‘the anti-Semitic implications of her father’s beliefs’. (4)
Effectively Birnbaum is claiming that this elderly lady is in denial about how evil her family was, and is, because up until Lemoine’s generation. They believed that Raphael Levy had indeed murdered Didier le Moyne.
Does that actually make her family evil?
Of course not, but the point is that even though Lemoine had explicitly written in support of jewish nationalism and non-conversion to her cherished Catholic faith because of the ‘Catholic persecution of jews’. (5) This wasn’t good enough for Birnbaum, because she hadn’t gone far enough and therefore in his estimation was on par with say Heinrich Himmler’s niece: Katrin Himmler. (6)
Instead he berates her in effect for her ‘Christian privilege’, about how her ancestors have ‘wronged jews’ and effectively demands she must make reparation for their sins.
Birnbaum’s assertions are a vile argument that exposes the obdurate and vicious tendency of the jewish community to hold entire families and nations hostage over their alleged historical ‘persecution’ of jews.
Yet when the boot is on the other foot these same jews not infrequently decry as irrational any attempt to collectively blame them for the conduct of individual jews towards non-jews.
Birnbaum is just another typically nasty piece of work who in practice treats non-jews as lesser beings. Who have ‘wronged’ the jews as a community and therefore need to pay their dues or be punished for all eternity by God’s chosen people.
References
(1) Pierre Birnbaum, 2012, ‘A Tale of Ritual Murder in the Age of Louis XIV: The Trial of Raphael Levy, 1669’, 1st Edition, Stanford University Press: Stanford
(2) Ibid., pp. 1-2
(3) Ibid., p. 2
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid., p. 3
(6) Ibid.