The Jews and the Rosenbergs
Commenter “y81” writes:
… [I]f you had polled American Jews in 1960 on whether the Rosenbergs were guilty: a large number, perhaps a majority, would have said that they were innocent, by which they meant primarily that the Rosenbergs’ hearts were in the right (i.e., far left) place, that they didn’t generally approve of the death penalty (unless administered by the Soviets), that Judge Kaufman should not have betrayed his religious compatriots, that David Greenglass should not have betrayed his family members, etc.
There are a lot of assumptions there. I happen to disagree with them – and in a moment I’ll explain why – but I highlighted this particular comment not to pick on y81 but because I think he or she is expressing views that are not uncommon.
The fact that there are many Jews prominent on the left does not mean that most Jews are on the left, even today when leftism seems more common among the general population, especially the young. Many famous lawyers are Jews, but most Jews are not lawyers; the American musical theater featured an enormous number of Jewish composers and lyricists but most Jews have never been composers or lyricists; and … well, you get the idea. Even in 2021, only half of Jewish voters described themselves as liberal; 32% described themselves as moderate, and 16% as conservative. The liberals were especially concentrated among reform Jews and those of no religious affiliation. Most of the Jewish voters I know are not leftists themselves but vote reflexively Democrat – which these days means they end up supporting leftists, of course. Among the Orthodox in that 2021 poll it was quite different: 60% described themselves as politically conservative, 26% as moderate, and 9% as liberal.
But what of the era of the Rosenbergs? We don’t have polls on that subject in the 1950s or in 1960 – at least, I couldn’t find any. But having grown up in New York City during the 1950s, I can say that my perception is that most Jews were middle-of-the-road Democrats – which in those days meant they were equivalent to moderate Republicans today. They were anti-Communists and did not support the Rosenbergs or the Soviet Union. However, what they were was frightened by the case, for very good reasons:
For Jews, the most important aspect of the Rosenberg case was the Jewish background of all four of the major defendants. All had obviously Jewish names. American Jews feared the Rosenberg trial would be a godsend to anti-Semites. What better proof could there be of the Communist sympathies of Jews and their support for the Soviet motherland? Never in American history was the hoary anti-Semitic association of Jews with Communism more believable than in the early 1950s.
The fear that the Rosenberg case would exacerbate anti-Semitism was heightened by the emphasis of European and American Communists on the couple’s Jewish background once it became clear that they were not going to talk.
The Jewish left defended them; the rest of the Jews did not, and “the rest” was a strong majority and an influential one. In fact
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) Collection at YIVO contains several files about the Rosenbergs and their trial. The AJC was founded in New York in 1906 to defend the civil and religious rights of Jews and other minorities throughout the world. Given the illustrious history of the organization and their strong stance against discrimination, one might expect the AJC files to contain materials about their defense of the Rosenbergs, or at a minimum, their denunciation of the antisemitism surrounding the affair or the severity of the punishment. But the archives tell a different story.
The cover letter for a memorandum called “The Defense of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg: A Communist Attempt to Inject the Jewish Issue,” dated March 27, 1952, warns, “In recent months Communists have been attempting to agitate concerning these condemned persons and to inject into the situation a suggestion that there are anti-Semitic implications to the conviction and the sentences. The AJC believes there is no foundation for such charges.” …
The AJC circulated another article defending the proceedings in June of 1952, entitled “The Communists Find a New Opening,” in which they denied any evidence of antisemitism, concluding: “Once more we find Communists and fellow-travellers trying to make anti-Semitism and anti-communism appear synonymous…The net that is being woven from spurious threads of the Rosenberg case must be regarded as one more example of Communist trickery.” …
In this environment, all of the mainstream Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League of B’nei B’rith, the American Jewish Congress, the Jewish War Veterans of the United States, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, banded together with the American Jewish Committee to issue a statement condemning the efforts by the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case to “inject the false issue of anti-Semitism.”
As for the number of Jews who were Communists, there’s this:
Although Jews made up a disproportionate share of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) — perhaps as much as 40 percent in 1939 — the party itself never held more than 100,000 members. So, in an American Jewish population of several million, a tiny percentage were Communists. Of course, this is not to count the many sympathizers and “fellow travelers,” drawn by the Soviet Union’s war against Nazism and its seeming opposition to anti-Semitism.
But there was also among Jews a greater number of fierce enemies of Communism than is sometimes credited. In the socialist garment unions, the Zionist enclaves, and the religious world, Jews who understood that Communism was a pernicious doctrine waged a continuous war against its influence. Indeed, for most of the Jewish community, the highly visible presence of so many Jews in the CPUSA, amplified by the location of so many of them in New York, the cultural and intellectual center of American life, was a constant source of tension and embarrassment. …
American anti-Semites had routinely insisted that the 1917 Bolshevik revolution was led by Jews as part of a far-reaching conspiracy against the Christian civilization of the West. Henry Ford linked Jews with Communism in his paper the Dearborn Independent, which also translated and circulated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. During the 1930s, Father Charles Coughlin excoriated Jews on his widely popular radio show. Charles Lindbergh, one of the leaders of America First, cited American Jews’ hostility to fascism as evidence of their alleged disloyalty to the U.S.
After World War II, the beginning of the cold war created a new and potentially even more fraught situation for American Jews. It was one thing for a number of Jews to have supported the USSR in the 1930s when Communists were temporarily on the same side in the fight against fascism in Spain, or later during World War II when the U.S. and the USSR were military allies. It was another thing when, in the late 1940s, the perception of Jewish support, however statistically insignificant, for an enemy of American democracy became much more disturbing.
A series of high-profile events amplified the concern.
The article goes on to list some of them. The Rosenberg case was, of course, prominent among them.
Timothy Snyder framed the issue in much the same way:
“While not many Jews were bolsheviks, many bolsheviks were Jews.”
And therein lies two problems.
IrishOtter:
Not sure what you mean by TWO problems.
Jews excel in many fields, most of them good but some bad.
“While not many Jews are Nobel prizewinning scientists, many Nobel prizewinning scientists are Jews.”
“While not many Jews are great violinists, many great violinists are Jews. “
I wonder what the Jews that immigrated to the US after WWII thought, politically.
I have a friend whose family left Germany after surviving Krystal Nacht. His family spread out over the world. Israel, US, Singapore. His Father joined the US Army and fought in France, Belgium (Battle of the Bulge) and Germany. He is very Conserative.
SHIREHOME:
As far as I know, most of the leftist Jews came to the US from Russian territories in the early years of the 20th century prior to the Russian revolution. Some of their kids became the red diaper babies. The revolution had initially promised an end to the violent antisemitism the immigrants had experienced in their countries of origin. That promise was later broken. But most Jews coming here in those days, from those countries, were not leftists. Jews became very reliable Democrats with FDR.
The thing that is curious about the atomic spy ring is we only pierced the outer onion skin greenglass fuch rosenberg not ted hall a similar thing happened with venona wiesband had already given up the program yet truman still didnt disclose
If memory serves me, the rest of the Rosenberg and Greenglass clan was mortified.
==
The Rosenbergs, the Greenglasses, Morton Sobell, Harry Gold, Alfred Sarant, and Joel Barr were all Jewish, as was the attorney for the Rosenbergs and Sobell. It was pretty much a Jewish enterprise.
==
I’ve seen the contention in print that about 1/2 of the Communist Party’s membership ca. 1947 was Jewish, which if true would amount to about 50,000 people out a Jewish population of about 5 million. Others passed through the American Labor Party in New York and Henry Wallace’s Progressive Citizens of America. Red haze politics have always been vastly more attractive to Jews in this country than to gentiles, but it did remain a minority taste in the Jewish population.
They were over represented but the hatred for say roy cohn over marcus raskin who did so much damage to us interests. as a soviet frontman or mort halperin
SHIREHOME
When I was an undergrad in the ’70s, I read a letter to the editor in National Review from a student at Columbia. He was the younger brother of one of my high school classmates. He stated that his conservative opinions, while not majority opinion at Columbia, got treated with respect-something that would probably not happen today.
I was surprised. A conservative who was Jewish? His father came to the US from Vienna, soon after Kristalnacht. Turns out his parents also had a conservative inclination. Hitler came to power promising radical change- that doesn’t sound very conservative- and he delivered on what he promised. Which helps explain why a Jew fleeing Hitler could be conservative.
Gringo:
It’s not unusual for German Jews who came here long ago to be more conservative. German Jews came here much earlier than Eastern European Jews and were very different.
Miguel cervantes’s comment about Halperin has temporarily disappeared. Nonetheless, I will comment on it.
The Chilean/North American author Ariel Dorfman connects the Rosenbergs and Halperin, and his family in his memoir Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey. At the time of the Rosenberg trial and execution, (Vladimir) Ariel Dorfman (truly a red diaper baby) was a child living in NYC. His father worked for the UN.
Dorfman’s family gave lodging to Maurice Halperin for a night before he fled to Mexico. The Feds told the UN: transfer Dorfman to a job outside the US, or we will deport him. So Dorfman’s father and his family moved to Chile. Halperin died 4 decades later without having returned to the US.
Halperin, a one-time spy for the Russkies, became disillusioned by his years of living in the USSR and Cuba. His Return to Havana: the Decline of Cuban Society under Castro is a good read.
(I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Dorfman’s father, apart from his being a Commie. If you are a foreigner in a country, you should keep out of local politics. He did not. I kept out of local politics when I was working in Latin America)
The first thing i remember about dorfman was his screed about disney and capitalism published in the allende era
I was referring to mort not maurice who was a nsc official under johnson and nixon then resigned over cambodia wrote a big tome the lawless republic than headed the dc aclu where he argued for phillip agees criminal campaign against the company
neo:
The two problems are as follows:
1. The majority of Jews who were/are not Bolsheviks/Marxists/Socialists/leftists etc. are tarred, unfairly and unjustly, by the brush of those who were/are. Which is attributable to the Bolsheviks/Marxists/Socialists/leftists etc. being more prominent in the public eye. . . their actions were/are more consequential . . . they dominate the “discussion” (whatever that may be) all out of proportion to their actual numbers. It isn’t fair to the majority, but there it is.
2. The few Jews, those in the minority, who were/are Bolsheviks/Marxists/Socialists/leftists etc. were/are evil. Which is especially unfortunate because these are the only Jews that most non-Jews in the so-called Bloodlands had or have any contact or dealings with.
Let me try to clarify. In the Second World War roughly 6 millions Poles, Gentiles and Jews alike, were done to death by the Nazis and the Soviets. About 3 million of those who perished were Jews; the other 3 million were Gentiles. In other words: Jewish and Gentile Poles were murdered or otherwise done to death by their oppressors in equal numbers.
Now, as it happened, I wrote a book about the Holocaust in Poland, focusing on the experiences of one family (and in particular, two members of that family) of secular Polish Jews. It was an extraordinary and highly educational experience for me.
Later, after the book’s publication, I decided I wanted to write a book about the 3 million Polish Gentiles who were similarly victimized (murdered, tortured, fatally abused, cruelly oppressed, etc) by their totalitarian overlords. To that end I conducted perhaps a hundred hours (or more) of oral history interviews with veterans of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) who fought in the Warsaw Uprising of !944 (not to be confused with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of !943).
This was also an educational experience. Two things I learned: One, in the Middle Ages Christian-Catholic Poland was a refuge for Jews who had been oppressed an expelled from other countries, and as a result was thus referred to Jews at the time as a “paradise” for Jews.
I also learned from many of the Polish AK veterans that when the Red Army drove the Germans out of Poland, they installed political officers (commissars, politruks, whatever) to administer Poland, and that these political officers were mostly Jews and quite ruthless and cruel toward the devoutly Catholic (and anti-Communist) Poles. This may have been a deliberate policy on the part of the Soviet hierarchy, as a means of breaking the anti-Soviet Poles to Stalin’s will. Be that as it may, this embittered the Poles toward Jews overall. The Soviet Jewish commissars were the only Jews that most of these Poles had ever known or encountered. And this all happened within very recent memory of the Katyn massacres of some 20,000 Polish army officers by NKVD executioners — and the NKVD was notorious among Poles, rightly or wrongly, for having a disproportionate number of Jews in its ranks.
In my experience most of the Polish AK veterans were NOT antisemitic Jew-haters. Some were involved in helping the Jews who took part in the Ghetto Uprising by smuggling what few arms they could spare — not many — to the Jewish fighters and by helping others escape the ghetto. But because of the experiences of Poles and Poland with Bolshevik/Communist commissars and political officers, they had ambivalent feelings about Jews.
I wasn’t about to blame them for this. I understood, understand, the reasons.
It always was and still is hard to be an inhabitant of the Bloodlands of Central and Eastern Europe. It’s hard, and it isn’t simple.
I hope you may extrapolate from what I said here my reason for my saying there were, are, two problems.
Plenty of Jews were Truman Democrats and had no use for Communists or the Rosenbergs. Probably more Jews than other Americans did sympathize with the Rosenbergs, but it wasn’t anything like a majority. The demographics were different then. American Jews weren’t as concentrated in the professions and academia. Plenty of them were small business owners or tradesmen. As for the American educated upper middle class in general, it’s harder to draw comparisons, but in spite of the leftist views of many in the intellectual elite, leftism wasn’t as de rigueur with the class as a whole as it is today.
Then as now, people tend to notice and remember the vocal minority, rather than the silent majority. It was somewhat similar with Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Germany, but the difference is that those who came over in the thirties were more likely to be intellectuals and already have leftish views than those who stayed behind. Still, those who weren’t left-inclined in Europe didn’t all turn left when they were here.
Siiiigh
Before this war, we were dealing with a meltdown by the red-diaper remnant here in Israel, who tried to bring down an elected government. The hard core is continuing to organize even during the war.
Ironically, both Left and Right leaning Jews in America claim that their political orientation flows from Jewish teaching and is an expression of their Jewish identity – although Lefties are generally more caught up in identity politics and “as a Jew” type rhetoric. It has taken conservative Jews more time to actually embrace their commonalities with Christian America.
Here is Israel it is even crazier – Left-leaning secular Zionists embarked on a program of national renewal while taking a scorched-earth approach to anything Jewish. This has not stopped them from claiming Jewish aegis for their “social justice” agenda. They are now furious that their revolutionary gods have failed, and that Judaism is once again a beloved, natural touchstone of identity for most Israelis.
I grew up surrounded by “truly liberal” New York Jews – but progressives and identity-marxists have destroyed the word liberal… and I have less and less sympathy for harder modern “progressive” Jews than I do for the old, sincerely liberal minded liberals of my youth.
Zionist Jews are racial supremacists and are working to take over the world. These Jews did 9/11 and orchestrated the October 7th attack. They have a long history of committing false flag attacks to further their political agenda. They dominate our politics, the financial world, the Media, Hollywood, etc. The are behind progressivism, socialism, communism, the push of porn on school-children and transgenderism in grade school, wokeism, racial division, cancel culture, the C19 plandemic and vax genocide, the war on police, on the military, on femininity, on masculinity, on the family, on patriotism, on the election system, etc. They are flooding majority white Western countries with the Third World to destroy them. They view anyone who is not in the their tribe as no better than cattle. The Bolsheviks starved and murdered millions in Russia and Ukraine, and they put Mao in power and he killed millions more.
There is a reason why these people have been kicked out of 100 countries over the centuries.
neo states, “Even in 2021, only half of Jewish voters described themselves as liberal; 32% described themselves as moderate, and 16% as conservative.”
That 50% of Jewish voters describe themselves as liberal and only 16% as conservative explains the
general political perception of Jews by the non- Jewish.
The 32% who describe themselves as moderate don’t count because they fit no particular category.
What is the political ‘identity’ of the independent voter? They have none because it… depends.
It’s a mistake to exercise liberal license to indulge diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry).
Judge a person by the content of their character.
Judge a religion (i.e. behavioral protocol) by the content of its principles, not principals (e.g. God, gods, mortal gods, experts, etc.).
Derangement alert.
miguel:
OT, but. . . . I’m curious. Anything going on at Rightwing Squatters?
On the comment at 6:06 p.m., I’m always amazed there are people who seem to believe this nonsense.
“William” at 6:06 PM is a fairly typical example of a completely and utterly deranged Jew-hater of the most virulent type. Whether he is of the mostly neo-Nazi variety or the “progressive” variety is a mere detail. And that such people are deranged doesn’t mean they can’t do a world of damage.
William is also typical in the broad scope of his “Protocols” type of conspiracy theory, and the use of centuries of antisemitism itself to prove the validity of Jew-hatred. “The fact that we hate them proves how much they deserve to be hated.”
I will leave his comment up as an excellent example of the poisonous genre.
Kate:
Stupidity? Mental Illness? Deformed soul?
The mind boggles.
neo said I will leave his comment up as an excellent example of the poisonous genre.
Wise move. An artifact of evil: it should be preserved, and observed.
Geoffrey Britain:
50% liberals isn’t so far off from other groups not so regarded.
Moderates are many things, but “leftists” isn’t one of them.
neo:
And, lest there be any misunderstanding concerning what I said at 3:05 about the Polish AK veterans: I understood and understand their ambivalent attitude toward Jews; but I didn’t, and don’t, agree with it. It is wrong, and helps to perpetuate the evil of antisemitism.
whoa that escalated quickly
not a whole lot, Irish I’ve been trying Ulysses for part of the writing exercise I’ve been doing
there are some slithy toves that seem to have emerged at the Althouse place, not the ones you might have expected,
There may have been a lot of Methodists or former Methodists who were communists. But there’s no such thing as a Methodist name.
well Carl Oglesby a founder of the SDS was a Methodist, so though teen age Hillary, ‘men know the truth, and deny it to themselves, so begins the Epistle of Romans
miguel cervantes:
Someone who remembers Carl Oglesby!
Be still my beating heart…
Who was it who said that only intellectuals could be stupid enough to believe in communism? Orwell? I can’t find the quote at this moment.
I do have a theory which might explain the disproportionate number of Jews in the ranks of the Bolsheviks.
Jews as a rule place the highest value on education and learning. And it is this love which brings them into close contact with all the pathologies of socialism. Other demographics also are susceptible to the contagion as there are plenty of non-Jews who are turned into Marxists in university.
So I think it is the result of the extraordinary contact with academia which has resulted in the disproportionate number of Jews in Bolshevik parties.
Ben David:
I really want to hear more from you.
I see the fall of J.R. Oppenheimer, a secular Jew and director of the Manhattan Project which produced the atomic bomb, as collateral fallout, if you will, to the Rosenberg case
When I was younger and leftist I was of course much more sympathetic to Oppenheimer. Now it’s obvious to me he did move in such circles, he was likely sympathetic and the stakes were high.
Weirdly, Christopher Nolan’s film, “Oppenheimer,” became a blockbuster last summer. I haven’t seen it, but I will.
David:
It is far more simple, I believe. The main drive for Jews to become Communists in pre-revolutionary Russia, and in the early days of the revolution, was that the early Communists promised to end anti-Semitism, which was rife there.
The Rosenbergs were dead-bang guilty of what they were indicted, tried, convicted, and executed for. I do not care if they were Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or atheist.
Erronius
Miguel
I get that. Point is, he’s not identifiable as Methodist by his name. Could be Presbyterian or Lutheran or Catholic.
huxley
He definitely moved in such circles. Commentary: Oppenheimer Was a Communist points out that Haakon Chevalier said that both he and Oppenheimer were members of a “closed unit” (secret unit) of the CPUSA.
Whatever. That brings forth some anecdotes. I spent 1969-70 as a hippie dropout eco-activist in Berserkeley. In that capacity I knew a Haakon Chevalier, who was about 10 years older than me . Some time after I met him I saw a Vietnam War petition in a local paper or magazine which had Haakon Chevalier (Sr.?) as one of the signers. I asked Haakon Chevalier if the Haakon Chevalier who signed the petition was his father. He replied that the Haakon Chevalier who signed the petition was his father. At the time I knew nothing of the history of his father. Nor did the son inform me. I didn’t find out Haakon Sr.’s history for decades.
In a meeting a fifty-something woman said, “Everyone in the thirties was a communist.” I don’t remember the context, but the statement so surprised me that I remembered it. The meeting was focused on some aspect of eco-activism. It just goes to show that there were plenty of commies/Commies in Berserkeley during the time Oppenheimer was there.
Neo–I commend your courage for bringing this discussion to the table!
I would like to add that I have known many Jews in academia and the vast majority of that community is communist–they speak socialism, but they are dedicated to the ideals of Davos and that evil does not allow one man one vote. The people I know who do the World Economic Forum are not even faking it anymore!
IrishOtter:
The Poles suffered very greatly in WWII. You write:
Equal numbers, but not equal percentages. Scroll down here and look at the chart called “Poland’s population balance.” Prewar Polish population of Jews was about 3,200,000. About 200K emigrated. 200K also survived (and after the war most went to Israel). 2.8 million were murdered. That means that about 88% of Poland’s Jews were murdered and half of the rest had emigrated, so only about 6% of Poland’s Jews remained or returned. In contrast, Poland’s non-Jewish population prior to the Nazi invasion was about 32 million, just about 10 times its Jewish population. So the percentage of murdered Poles (including other much smaller groups who lived there, such as Ukrainians), was a little under 10%. The Nazis had plans to murder a lot more of them had the war gone on or had the Nazis won, of course. But the difference is striking. Polish Jews were eliminated; Poles were not.
Yes, Poland had been one of the best countries for Jews for many centuries. But there still was a great deal of Jew-hatred there, unfortunately, especially in the couple of centuries when Poland lost its sovereignty long before WWII, and then again during a decade or two prior to WWII. When you write “The Soviet Jewish commissars were the only Jews that most of these Poles had ever known or encountered” I find that somewhat difficult to believe. I’m not saying they were lying, but I’m puzzled by the statement. Jews and Poles were separate to a certain extent, culturally (and sometimes linguistically), but Jews were very prominent in Poland and also very numerous. Jews made up 10% of the population, and in cities such as Warsaw they made up huge percentages of the population, but they also lived in rural areas:
Perhaps the people with whom you spoke had been influenced by some of these things:
That all occurred before those Soviet commissars. There are many more details at the link.
I’d bet my 6 bucks against your 5 that that is not a genuine antisemite, but rather someone playing one or trolling for whatever reason.
I’d say why, but I’d rather not give the author any hints he might use to refine his technique.
Anne:
I have also known plenty of Jews in academia and the vast majority are not Communist. They are certainly Democrats and sometimes leftists, just like almost everyone else in academia these days.
There’s also this sort of thing.
Gringo, huxley re “Oppenheimer.”
It is expected to be re-released this January-March 2024. At least in IMAX.
But I’ve seen no announcement, yet.
The film ls closely based on the biography “American Prometheus,” by Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird, published in 2005. At least one of the two authors was quite sympathetic to Oppenheimer.
Because it is a long ensemble movie, it helps to look it up the entry on Wikipedia, so as to know who’s who in advance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_(film)
Both the book and the movie finds General Leslie Groves (played by Matt Damon), who recruits him to lead the task of building the A-bomb, is convinced that only Oppenheimer could have managed to pull off the secret Manhattan Project successfully.
Oppenheimer believed that only by using the A-bomb in war could people believe in the awe fullness of its use. I agree.
Oppenheimer was subject to official and unofficial Congressional investigation as the Cold War effort gathered steam. Because of this, he was stripped of his security clearances. And although nominated for the Nobel Prize twice, he never achieved this reward — likely because of this controversy.
As the film brilliantly depicts, success led him to insist on the evil of its use, after World War II. He is haunted by the dead, and by taking an ethical humanist stance, he assuages his conscience. Others demur or outright disagree.
Ultimately, it’s his many frequent associations with card carrying CPUSA members that is a quiet indictment against his too easy gullibility towards their good “motives” over political-economics that wrecks his future. Although the price he pays is wrong in some sense, this precaution was necessary and deserved. Sound security is only achieved by rubbing up against this paradox, not by trying to threading the eye of the needle.
A couple of further pointers to clarify the film narrative. The scenes with Albert Einstein never happened. They do, however, fictionally channel the man’s moral sense of matters.
Secondly, a critical foil in the latter half of the film is Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr) of the Atomic Energy Commission. His secretary is a composite character. their monologues to each other explain the changed Cold War security issues.
“The whole film is about consequences. The delayed onset of consequences that people often forget.”
— Christopher Nolan
The powerful ending to “Oppenheimer” unpacking this quip is reprised, here
https://www.vulture.com/article/oppenheimer-ending-explained-christopher-nolan.html
Is it, as maintained, the MOST powerful and unexpected Nolan ended ever? Let you decide.
Some miss Can Do!
Slightly OT, but in response to some earlier comments: in the late 1960s, those of us on the New Left thought the 1930s-era CPUSA holdovers were hopelessly stodgy reactionaries.
Another important Soviet spy during World War II was George Koval, who was Jewish and a native of Sioux City, Iowa. His parents immigrated to the U.S. from Russia.
Koval was a spy for the GRU, or Soviet military intelligence.
From his Wikipedia page, it appears the U.S. knew of his spying sometime not long after he left the U.S. in 1948. But it wasn’t revealed to the world until November 2007, when these articles were published in the NY Times in November 2007 (likely gated):
“An American ‘regular guy’ was a Russian top spy” (Nov. 11, 2007, front page, I believe)
“A Spy’s Path: Iowa to A-Bomb to Kremlin Honor” (Nov. 12, 2007): Includes photo of Putin and Russian intelligence officers, posthumously awarding Koval “Hero of the Russian Federation” — “the highest Russian award” — “to a Soviet agent who penetrated the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb”
The NY Times print version is where I learned of this. I seem to recall that the article on the front page had a large version of the small photo that accompanies the Nov. 12, archived article. It was the biggest news of the day.
According to the Nov. 11, 2007 article:
“Koval was a mole groomed in Russia by the GRU, the Soviet agency for military intelligence. Moreover, he gained wide access to America’s atom plants – a feat unknown for any other Soviet spy. Nuclear experts say the secrets of bomb manufacturing can be more important than those of design.” …
“He was born in 1913 in Sioux City, Iowa, which had a large Jewish community and half a dozen synagogues. In 1932, during the Great Depression, his family immigrated to the Siberian city of Birobidzhan, which Stalin promoted as a secular Jewish homeland.”
The advice columnists, twin sisters Ann Landers and Dear Abby, are probably the most well-known of Sioux City’s Russian Jewish community.
They were 5 years younger and graduated from the same high school as Koval.
Not really on topic, but a lot of Jewish friends seem afraid of Christianity (We will institute a theocracy) and therefore are democrats.
Neo: Thank you for posting that piece regarding a program for 11th and 12th graders. It supports what I have been trying to tell people–the Jewish community schools (private?) are way ahead of America’s public school system. It is a model we should all be trying to follow.
With regard as to what separates a liberal, a democrat, and a communist I will say that I believe the moment anyone considers the idea of one man one vote to be an out-of-date and a useless ideal–that is the moment they become socialist. The moment they begin to destroy the lives of others for the sake of their own personal success using the ideology of “socialism” as their cover–that is when they become communists. In today’s world, it really has become pretty easy peasy to distinguish a communist in academia or anywhere else. We are just afraid to use the word, but the time has come to call them out! When you decide to deliberately try to hurt me or my family, because you cannot control my thinking, or silence me–you are a communist.
The Rosenbergs were dead-bang guilty of what they were indicted, tried, convicted, and executed for.
==
Julius was guilty. Ethel may or may not have been an accomplice.
I still do not understand how anybody (other than a Russian Bolshevik), regardless of their religion or ethnicity could spy for Stalin; a tyrant who murdered more people than did Hitler.
A tyrant who was Hitler’s ally for almost the first two years of WWII and supplied the Nazis with oil and other commodities.
A tyrant who invaded Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Eastern Poland (the latter in Sept 1939.
What were those “American” spies – many highly educated – for Stalin thinking?
What is it about the leftist mindset that dismissed the horrible and deadly consequences of Stalinism?
Just look thru the book, “Witness,” by Whittaker Chambers or look thru the list of names obtained from the Venona Papers. As for the latter, most, but not all were in fact spying for Stalin’s Russia, including Alger Hiss and the Rosenberg’s.
A very good account of the Rosenberg’s can be found in the book “The Rosenberg File,” by Ron Radosh. The author was a former lefty that grew up, literally, in a communist household in NYC (Manhattan and in Sunnyside, Queens, NY) and was a former leftist radical. When he wrote this book, he was still a radical lefty and his intent was to prove the innocence of the Rosenberg’s.
What he discovered in researching for his book was the opposite (which led to his being ostracized by his lefty pals; some things never change !)
An earlier book of his, “Commies,” describes his NYC upbringing in his communist family and describes how some of his relatives would be “gone” for some time because they would be going “underground.”
There never is a shortage of useful idiots and these idiots – and let’s be clear, these idiots are dangerous people and should be treated accordingly – cross all ethnic, religious, educational, socio-economic, and politically influential boundaries.
One of the worst death camps / gulags in Stalin’s Russia was Kolmya, in Siberia (one of the coldest places on earth).
And which American visited there in 1944 and came back raving about what a great place it was?
Why none other than the Vice President (at the time) of the USA – Henry Wallace !! – who, most likely was a spy for Stalin (as were one or two other american officials who accompanied him to Kolyma.)
Sen. Joe McCarthy may have been on obnoxious, vociferous, SOB of an a-hole (at least, that is what we all have been told to believe, just as we all were led to believe the Trump/Russia scam) but after the release of the Venona files, it seems much of what he claimed was in fact accurate.
The Jewish vote skews right in much of the rest of the world including Israel and Britain. Thatchers core constituents were Jewish.
the key is observance. Jewish Jews skew right and secular skew left. Unfortunately America suffered from the founder effect. In the great Fiddler on the Roof wave, the religious authorities in Russia said not to leave because those who left would assimilate. (they were correct) which is also why the victims of the Germans were disproportionately Frum
Neo at 10:14
Yes, reaction to Russian anti-semitism was certainly a factor. Which I think adds weight to my thought: The intellectual circles of the day recognized the problem and preached a Marxist solution. Jews more than Gentiles gravitated towards intellectual endeavors and were therefore more likely to become infected with the pathogen. I mean, how many of us have seen our rightly ordered progeny off to university only to become ‘woke’?
neo:
Perhaps the people with whom you spoke had been influenced by some of these things. . .
The people with whom I spoke were almost without exception AK veterans who had taken part in the Home Army’s Warsaw Uprising of 1944. At war’s end the Soviets undertook to eliminate them and their families. Soviet efforts in this regard were spearheaded by the NKVD and associated state paramilitary and political organs, which were perceived by the Poles — not entirely unfairly — to be controlled, at the command levels, by a disproportionate number of secular Jews.
As I said, this comports with Timothy’s Snyder’s observation that many (most Jews) were not Bolsheviks, but many Bolsheviks were Jews. This had been the case since the Bolshevik takeover of Russia and Poles were well aware of that fact; as they were also well aware — i.e., became well aware — that Jews were disproportionately represented at the high (command levels) of Soviet organs of terror and political oppression.
It bears repeating that the number of Jews at those levels was, relative to the overall number of Jews in the Soviet population, vanishingly small. But that was irrelevant to the men and women whom I interviewed. These were among the fortunate Poles who were resettled in Britain, Australia, and the U.S. as part of a deliberate effort by the Western Allies to save from the grim fate the Soviets had devised for them.
To repeat: for the most part the men and women whom I interviewed denied that they were antisemitic. But, in general, they were embittered and frustrated by what had happened to them, and by the consequential and largely unacknowledged role that a small number of Jews had played in their sufferings.
My characterization of the paucity of Polish interactions was misstated. What I should have said was that Poles and Jews at all levels of Polish society generally did not socialize with each other.
It is perhaps revealing that the my Polish veterans reserved their greatest animus — and it was a very great animus indeed — for Russians overall. Not Jews — Russians. This animus predated by many years, even decades and centuries, any antipathy many Poles felt toward Jews. I once asked one of my AK veteran interviewees whom he hated more, the Germans or the Russians. By way of answering he said, “The Germans, they would come straight up to you and announce they were going to kill you, and then they would try to kill you. But, ah, the Russians! They would embrace you and throw an arm around your shoulder and say that they were your friends . . . and then, when you turned away from them, they would stab you in the back.”
The Russians,” he concluded, “were worse.”
The roots of Polish antisemitism are deep and tangled. It was certainly increasing, especially at the lower levels of Polish society, in the modern period, in particular after the Bolshevik revolution. There was more to it, in terms of causation, than Nazi influence and, say, the moral degradation of elements of the Catholic Church in Poland. I know something about it, pursuant to my research for the writing of my aforementioned book on the Holocaust in Poland. If you wish to discuss it further, I’m willing do so; but not now, not here.
One final note. The AK veterans always expressed puzzlement as to why the Jews of Poland didn’t put up more of a fight against the Nazis. To be sure, they knew were familiar with the explanations for this phenomenon; but they remained puzzled. So do I, albeit to a lesser extent. And there’s this: their esteem for the Jews of Warsaw skyrocketed as a result of the ghetto uprising.
Make of that what you will.
“Jews more than Gentiles gravitated towards intellectual endeavors and were therefore more likely to become infected with the pathogen.” As is the case today with the World Economic Forum/Davos !
Re: Oppenheimer as Communist
Gringo:
Thanks for the Commentary link on Oppenheimer. It is persuasive that Oppenheimer was a secret member of the Communist Party, he lied about it under oath, but he did not spy for the Soviets.
Complicated.
My Oppenheimer anecdote. While my uncle lived in Dallas and worked at Love Field, he once stepped into an elevator and realized he was standing next to Oppenheimer.
They exchanged no words. My uncle just remembered Oppenheimer’s haunted eyes.
IrishOtter:
People of fighting age in Poland had probably been born sometime in the first two and a half decades of the 20th century and had been surrounded by anti-Semitism all their lives although not necessarily of the murderous kind. Whether or not they personally shared those views prior to the Soviet takeover, they still were familiar with anti-Semitism and it was the background noise of their lives. I know you’ve done a great deal of research and have a great deal of knowledge about the era, and I agree that there were many things combining to cause Polish anti-Semitism. And some Poles, of course, rescued Jews, something I wrote about in this post, and the penalties were much higher for Poles when they did than for people in other Nazi-occupied countries.
You write:
I have written about the explanations here and I don’t find them at all puzzling. In addition to what I wrote there, I will add that actually a significant number of Jews in Poland did fight back pretty well, but most people know little about that.
Again, perhaps you’re well aware of it, but perhaps not so here’s one article on Jews fighting back in Poland by becoming partisans. Note also this:
There were also phenomena such as this, an article about a type of fighting back and resistance among Polish Jews that hasn’t gotten much publicity.
And here’s an article about the AK and the Jews. If you’re not already familiar with that research, it might interest you.
Lastly, let me say I’m so happy you seem to be doing better healthwise, and Happy New Year!
Re: Oppenheimer the film
TJ:
And thank you for your thoughtful review of Christopher Nolan’s film.
I’ll see it, I recognize Nolan is a major director, but I’ve hated just about all his films I’ve seen, except “Memento,” for being dishonest or stupid in an overblown intellectual way.
So, I’m ambivalent about going once more into the breach with Nolan on “Oppenheimer.” The casting of Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer is, however, brilliant. Murphy has Oppenheimer’s gaunt features and haunted eyes and is a fine actor.
Anyone curious about Murphy ought to check out “Peaky Blinders,” in which Murphy plays a British crime lord after World War I.
IrishOtter, neo:
“Defiance” was a 2008 film, starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schrieber, about Jewish Polish brothers who fled to the forests after the Nazis killed their parents. I’ve forgotten why, but they ended up in Belarus, next door to Poland.
It’s based on a true story:
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In the epilogue it is revealed that the survivors lived in the forest for another two years, building a hospital, a nursery and a school, growing to a total of 1,200 Jews. Original photographs of the participants are shown, including Tuvia in his uniform, and their fates are described: Asael was conscripted into the Red Army and killed in action, never getting to see the child he fathered; Tuvia, Zus and Aron survived the war and emigrated to the United States to form a trucking firm in New York City. The epilogue also states that the Bielski brothers never sought recognition for what they did and that the descendants of the people they saved now number in the tens of thousands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defiance_(2008_film)
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I confess the film didn’t quite come together for me, but I honor the memory, especially now that it seems to be fading and is being overwritten with lies.
Now remember Jonathan Pollard:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard#:~:text=Jonathan%20Jay%20Pollard%20(born%20August,jailed%20for%20spying%20for%20Israel.
Re: Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”
TJ:
Ohhh. Groan. I read the Vulture article on Nolan’s ending and it’s exactly the standard pompous Nolan BS I feared.
_____________________________________
Now, however, comes the key moment, and the one that strikes the dark note that the film closes on. As Einstein turns to leave, Oppenheimer reminds him of an earlier conversation they had before the testing of the first atom bomb, when the Manhattan Project physicists were worried that the chain reaction caused by the atomic bomb might never end — that it could proceed to ignite the Earth’s atmosphere and destroy the planet.
“When I came to you with those calculations,” Oppenheimer tells Einstein, “we thought we might start a chain reaction that might destroy the entire world.”
“What of it?” Einstein asks.
“I believe we did,” Oppenheimer says.
_____________________________________
Of course, as TJ informs us, that conversation never occurred. Nolan made it up. Yet it’s the fulcrum of the film.
So Nolan is someone who, without a qualm, imagines he can peer into genius minds and pass his imaginings on to the entire world as the truth.
Nolan is a superb cinematic technician, but in my book he’s another Neil deGrasse Tyson pronouncing His Profound Thoughts.
}}} Even in 2021, only half of Jewish voters described themselves as liberal; 32% described themselves as moderate, and 16% as conservative.
Not that I disagree with any other aspect of this piece, I’m not sure if this quoted kind of thing can really be trusted, Neo.
Leftists really really don’t like the idea that they are at all on a fringe, even when it’s blatantly self-evident that they ARE. They have too high an opinion of themselves that, having been mainstream for upwards of 50+ years, that they have continued to drift further and further left until they are so far off the pavement that they couldn’t see the center line using the Webb telescope.
As a result, people who classify themselves as “middle of the road” or “moderate” may very well be making Ralph Nader, the former far far left, look like a Reagan Republican by comparison.
Not saying their assessments are wrong. Just saying this is posdef an arena where self-assessment can be relied on for a binary option — “are you left or right?” — but not for anything more nuanced.
And as I’ve noted before — the left, for all its love of “nuance” and “non-binary”, is amazingly binary when push comes to shove, and you get down to having them make decisions that reflect their position on the spectrum.
}}} Nolan is a superb cinematic technician, but in my book he’s another Neil deGrasse Tyson pronouncing His Profound Thoughts.
Yeah, Spielberg does this stuff, too, which is why you should take anything he does that is biographical with at least a grain of salt. There are certain places where he feels no need to render The Truth, whenever he does not like The Truth.
1 — At the end of Schindler’s List, you see his Jews sitting there waiting for someone to come along and take them over. Spielberg hates guns, and, the reality is, Schindler armed his Jews, so they could defend themselves if they were set upon by a loose Nazi element or some antisemitic Russians.
2 — At the end of Amistad, he has the protagonist sailing back to Africa to live happily ever after. While I grant it is debated, the last I heard, there is nontrivial evidence that his protagonist — who was fighting being brought to the USA as a slave — wound up living in the West Indies and becoming a slave trader himself.
3 — This is just part and parcel with his virulent anti-gun stance… when he re-released and “tweaked” E.T after 25(?) years, one of the things he did was digitally edit all the agents drawing guns on ET and Eliot, and instead they are pulling out Walkie-Talkies. SMH. Yeah, because the government would NEVER draw weapons on an alien, just because there was a kid nearby. :-/
Asked what it felt like to take human life, “I wouldn’t know, I’ve only ever killed Communists…..”
— Polish mercenary Rafal Ganowicz —
Peeps sometime come up with amazingly twisted rationalizations for things they do.
}}} Oppenheimer believed that only by using the A-bomb in war could people believe in the awe fullness of its use. I agree.
I have to say, I have long held the position that, if there is a multiverse, the ones where The Bomb was not used on Japan are probably nuclear wastelands or still recovering from all-out Hot War.
If it had not been done, it is quite reasonable, to me, that, lacking that terrible example, the Powers That Be — the ones whose actual decision it was to Go To War — would have possibly fooled themselves into believing that it was winnable and/or would be “acceptable losses”.
But such a war would have taken place with H-bombs, not A-bombs, and with quite a few of them, not just one or two.
Many are unaware, but, as I understand it, there was a point during the Korean War — probably when the Chinese came over the border and pushed the USA back — when we were apparently closer to war than we were during the far far more visible Cuban Missile Crisis 10y later. Bombers had already taken off with the USSR as their destination before being recalled quickly after (long before they got anywhere near Soviet airspace). This is where the notion of Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove actually came from.
Had they not had Hiroshima and Nagasaki as visible examples of what they were going to have happen — would the field tests against shacks and other quickly erected temporary structures really have carried the full import of what it would look like to have an H-bomb strike NYC, Chicago, or Detroit? Hard to say — people can do remarkable jobs fooling themselves sometimes.
Harlan Ellison, appearing on Nightline, on August 6, 1990, discussed his belief that the H-bomb, far from being an immoral weapon, due to it being so indiscriminate, asserted that it was, in fact, the most moral weapon since kings rode into battle at the head of their armies… for the first time in centuries, those whose choice it was to go to war were as subject to the results of that war as Joe Blow. Even more so, as they had all their wealth and power to lose, as well as their lives. All Joe Blow would lose is his life.
And his second point was that the fact that it had not been used again in (then) 45 years [now: 78 years] was unprecedented in human history. At no point have we ever developed a weapon and never used it again for decades. About the closest thing to it are some of the war gasses, but those it’s as much an issue of the fact that it can blow right back into your own face, as any hesitation about using it vs. its effect on the “enemy”.
Obloodyhell:
You are on a roll today! Great start for the New Year.
Well lets ponder this if the us had not used the bomb there would have been a ruinous mainland invasion, the war might have extended another year what would the impact have been there. The soviets might have taken northern japan by 1949 they would have the bomb if not sooner,
The subsequent effect of the bomb was to deter effective action agajnst soviets in korea during hungary in cuba in vietnam in the yom kippur war tell me where im wrong
ObloodyHell,
It wasn’t uncommon for former slaves to end up owning slaves. Until the late 1600s slavery in English America was indentured servitude, and black former indentured servants would run plantations with other blacks indentured servants.
Also, note how Star Wars was changed, in the original Han Solo shot first. It was edgy and cool, but I guess it had to be changed since Bush invaded Iraq.