Fic­tion

The Prague Cemetery

Umber­to Eco; Richard Dixon, trans.
  • Review
By – December 7, 2011
Umber­to Eco’s fas­ci­nat­ing and dis­turb­ing new nov­el is a fic­tion­al account of how the noto­ri­ous sham The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion” was invent­ed from nov­els and forg­eries to become the work that con­tributed so heav­i­ly to Hitler’s anti-Semi­tism. In Simone Simoni­ni, the only fic­tion­al char­ac­ter in the nov­el, Eco has cre­at­ed one of the most despi­ca­ble char­ac­ters in mod­ern lit­er­a­ture. He describes how this spy, forg­er, glut­ton, and vir­u­lent anti-Semi­te man­u­fac­tured an eye-wit­ness account of a meet­ing of rab­bis from through­out Europe who come togeth­er in a ceme­tery in Prague to plot the destruc­tion of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion and become the rulers of the West­ern world. Even­tu­al­ly Simoni­ni will enhance his orig­i­nal nar­ra­tive for the Czarist secret ser­vice; it sub­se­quent­ly becomes The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion.Eco’s nov­el requires some under­stand­ing of nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Euro­pean his­to­ry, as he moves from the events that uni­fied Italy; to the Prague Jew­ish ceme­tery, where the leg­endary Rab­bi Loew of Golem fame is buried, to the France of the Drey­fus affair. Along the way we encounter the Jesuit plot against the Freema­sons, and the canard that Jews were behind the Masons and all rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ments since 1789, con­spir­ing to destroy crown and scepter. Through the char­ac­ter of Simoni­ni, Eco shows us the under­world of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry which played its part in the events that led to the rise of Hitler and the Holo­caust. He con­cludes this work with a quote from Hitler’s Mein Kampf : 

How much of the whole exis­tence of this peo­ple is based on per­ma­nent false­hood is appar­ent in the famous Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion. Every week the Fran­furter Zeitung whines they are based on forgery: and here lies the best proof that they are gen­uine… When this book becomes the com­mon her­itage of all peo­ple, the Jew­ish per­il can then be con­sid­ered as tamped out.

Eco notes that the Pro­to­cols may be the most wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed work in the world after the Bible.

Jack Fis­chel is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of his­to­ry at Millersville Uni­ver­si­ty, Millersville, PA and author of The Holo­caust (Green­wood Press) and His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of the Holo­caust (Row­man and Littlefield).

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