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This post has only a marginal relevance to gnxp, but for those who may be interested I am putting it below the fold.
In the British Press there has recently been some controversy about Winston Churchill and alleged anti-semitism. An unpublished magazine article of 1938, not written by Churchill but allegedly approved for publication in his name, contains references to Jews which would get him into trouble today, though at the time they would have seemed relatively innocuous.
But what I want to discuss is a claim that Churchill himself had Jewish ancestry on his mother’s side. According to a letter by Mark Corby in the London Times on 22 March, ‘his mother Jenny Jacobson/Jerome was a New York Jew, as was pointed out by Moshe Kohn in an article in the Jerusalem Post of January 18, 1993’. But a letter on 26 March from David Watson denied this, claiming that Churchill’s American ancestry could be traced back to the early 18th century, without a sign of any ‘Jacobson’.
Now I don’t personally care much whether Churchill had Jewish ancestry or not, but I see from the internet that this claim (specifically, that his maternal grandfather changed his name from Jacobson to Jerome) is popular in certain circles. Why did Churchill hate that nice Mr Hitler? Why did he betray the Aryan race? Why, it’s obvious, isn’t it – he was one of those!
So I wanted to see whether there is any basis for the claim. I began with an internet search, but found nothing to support the claim other than repeated references to the article by Moshe Kohn. Since a newspaper article is hardly a good primary source, this does not inspire confidence. My next step was to visit a library with excellent biographical collections. There are countless biographies of Churchill, a few of his mother Jenny, and one of his mother’s father, Leonard Jerome. On browsing relevant parts of these, I found them unanimous in tracing Churchill’s Jerome ancestry back to Timothy Jerome, of Huguenot descent, who migrated to America around 1717. Of course, this might all be an elaborate cover story, but if so it is one that could easily be refuted. The biographies contain references to public figures, such as Leonard Jerome’s uncle Judge Hiram Jerome, and records in public archives which could be checked by anyone suspicious of a cover-up. The only serious gap in the official records of Churchill’s ancestry is a long way back in the female line, which cannot be traced beyond his great-great-grandmother, Anna Baker. According to family legend, she was part-Iroquois Indian, which the family believed accounted for the prevalence of dark eyes or complexion in the family. This does have a certain whiff of cover-up, but if so the cover-up may be of something other than Jewish blood. According to one account, Churchill himself believed there was a drop of black somewhere in his ancestry (see Elisabeth Kehoe, Fortune’s Daughters: The Extravagant Lives of the Jerome Sisters (2004), p.4). In any case, the usual claims of Jewish ancestry concern Churchill’s mother’s father, Leonard Jerome, and not the female line leading back to Anna Baker.
Nevertheless, to be sure that I had not missed anything, I searched the internet again, and found two pieces of ‘evidence’ occasionally cited in support of the story. One is a claim that Churchill’s cousin, the Irish writer and politician Shane Leslie, wrote a biography of Churchill which was left unpublished at Churchill’s insistence, allegedly because it let the cat out of the bag concerning the Jeromes’ Jewish ancestry. But Shane Leslie also wrote his own autobiography, Long Shadows, published after Churchill’s death, in which he described his Jerome ancestors. Leslie passed on his researches into the family history to his daughter, Anita Leslie, who wrote biographies of both Leonard and Jenny Jerome, and to Ralph Martin, biographer of Jenny (Ralph G. Martin, Lady Randolph Churchill: A Biography (1969).) None of these books mentions any Jewish ancestry. If Shane Leslie had discovered a secret which he was persuaded not to publish during Churchill’s lifetime, why would he continue to suppress it after Churchill’s death?
The other piece of ‘evidence’ is a claim that the historian David Irving had proved Churchill’s Jewish ancestry in his book Churchill’s War. If David Irving told me the time, I would check five different clocks before I accepted it, but he does admittedly have a reputation for finding new documentary evidence (usually provided by elderly Nazis), so I naturally went back to the library to look at Churchill’s War. In volume 1, published in 1987, I find nothing to suggest any Jewish ancestry for Churchill. But in volume 2, published in 2001, at last we find a reference – in a real, published book – to Churchill being ‘born of partly Jewish blood’ and having a ‘part-Jewish mother’ (page xii). So I turned with trembling hands to the end-notes (page 855) to find the documentary basis for these assertions – only to find nothing but a reference to Moshe Kohn’s article of 18 January 1993!
So it seems that all roads lead to Kohn. I therefore decided I must track down his article in the Jerusalem Post. I did not expect this to be easy, but I found that the JP has searchable online archives going back at least to 1993. On searching for articles by Moshe Kohn referring to Churchill I got a surprise. There is indeed a relevant article, but its date is not 18 January, as stated by Irving and all the others, but 15 January. This has two fairly obvious implications: first, those repeating the incorrect date are copying directly or indirectly from David Irving, and second, they have not read the article for themselves. If they had, they might be less confident in their assertions.
The article itself is clearly aimed at an Israeli audience with Israeli preoccupations. It begins with a passage of heavy sarcasm:
THANK God – at last we know the truth about Winston Churchill: he was a psychopathic revanchist, obsessed with defeating Germany in World War II, thus preventing Adolf Hitler from saving civilization from the Red menace. Several rational British historical revisionists have just revealed this, half a century after Churchill inflicted all that pain and grief on those poor Germans.
These ‘revisionists’ are not named, but David Irving himself (at that time still not entirely discredited) is one obvious target. Another possibility is John Charmley, whose book Churchill: A Political Biography, appeared around the beginning of 1993.
But Kohn continues:
Or is it a related idiosyncrasy that bothers those revisionists? I mean the streak that caused Churchill to draw on Jewish – particularly biblical – modes and language, especially regarding the treatment of enemies like Hitler and Mussolini. Are they particularly galled by his penchant for calling on God, despite his rejection of “the Christian or any other form of religious belief” (as he wrote to his mother in 1898)? And with typical Churchillian cunning, he did all that in the name of “Christian civilization”… (That cunning no doubt came to Churchill in the Jewish genes transmitted by his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, nee Jenny Jacobson/Jerome. )
And that’s it. That is the entirety of Kohn’s discussion of Churchill’s alleged Jewish ancestry. It is not even clear that it is intended seriously. (Kohn died in 2005, so we cannot ask him.) The whole of Kohn’s first paragraph, directed at the ‘revisionists’, is written in a mode of sarcasm. (The rest of the article is a defence of Churchill, who is presented as a model for hard-line Israeli politicians.) Kohn evidently suspected that the revisionists had an underlying anti-semitic motive, and his reference to Churchill’s Jewish ancestry may be nothing more than an allusion to some pre-existing anti-semitic rumour or fantasy. On th
e assumption that Moshe Kohn himself was Jewish – which seems a fair guess – he would hardly have seriously referred to ‘cunning… in the Jewish genes’: a stereotypical piece of anti-semitic nonsense. But even if Kohn’s reference to Churchill’s Jewish ancestry was intended seriously, it is of no value as historical evidence, and no competent historian would rely on it without supporting documentation.
I conclude that there is no worthwhile evidence to support the claim of Jewish ancestry, and there seems to be strong documentary evidence against it. I say seems, because I have not examined the archival sources for myself. But the burden of proof is on those who wish to show that the official account is false.
PS: to avoid confusion, I should make it clear that I am not David Boxenhorn, who occasionally contributes to this site. David is an Israeli, and therefore might be thought to have a personal interest in the issue. I do not.
PPS: While on Churchillian themes, I take the opportunity to recommend the HBO/BBC drama The Gathering Storm. I was impressed by this when it was first screened, and I watched it again recently on DVD. It has a superb cast, including Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave, Jim Broadbent, Derek Jacobi, Tom Wilkinson, Linus Roache, Lena Headey, Celia Imrie, Hugh Bonneville, and a host of familiar character actors in minor roles. Indeed, this got a bit distracting: I kept expecting Hugh Laurie to pop up playing Bertie Wooster. Also, the background music was sometimes intrusive. And the script (like Churchill’s memoirs on which it was based) was probably unfair to Stanley Baldwin. But all quibbles apart, it was a fine drama, above all for Albert Finney’s performance as Churchill.
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Roosevelt (“Rosenfeld”) was also accused of Jewish ancestry.
This issue brings out the loonies. I read a long anti-Semitic tract once which would have been stupid anyway, but which really outdid itself by confusing the Khazakhs and the Khazars throughout (a thousand years and hundreds of miles off).
Someone with only Jewish great-grandparent would be a German by Nazi law unless they practiced Judaism (though they theoretically couldn’t join the SS, which require Christian ancestry back to 1750). Even with two Jewish grandparents you could be a “mischling” and serve in the German Army. So even if the rumor were true, lots of Nazis were as German as Churchill was.
This just like the hoax story about the chalice / womb /magdalene/jesus christ.
Next thing we will read, magdalene gave birth to the ancestors of all the great /popular men. One by one, the history is being rewritten to feed the ego of some.
If David Irving told me the time, I would check five different clocks before I accepted it
David Irving himself (at that time still not entirely discredited
Interesting that you’d bother to spend time researching the work of a ‘discredited’ historian.
Also interesting that nowhere do you mention that Irving is now in prison in Austria for the crime of Holocaust Denial.
Interesting world.
Looks like Irving was let out of prison in Dec. 2006 after serving 10 months. My mistake. I must’ve missed reading about it in the newspapers.
I thought everyone at this site would have already known Irving was imprisoned for Holocaust denial. There’s a sort of invisible sign saying “You must be at least this well-informed to find material here worthwhile”. I haven’t read anything by Irving, but I find it chilling that it’s a felony in some first world countries to bullshit about history. It’s also rather odd that (I think in France) you can be locked up for denying the Armenian genocide while in Turkey you can get busted for affirming it! Ownthink ist verboten!
I am amazed at the use of the racial biology methods of the turn of the century (1900) to investigate Churchill’s ancestry. Why not analyze his DNA through his children and grandchildren and relatives? Also the Jerome/Jacobsohn/Ben Yaakov family survives, lets analyze the genotype of contemporary survivors. It should be easy to discover Jewish markers, shouldnt it be?
Jefferson prolly wasn’t Jewish either. (You probably covered this.)
I am amazed at the use of the racial biology methods of the turn of the century (1900) to investigate Churchill’s ancestry
sometimes 21st century methods are really not needed…. (though when it doubt, supplementary methods are prolly helpful)
If Churchill were an American political figure, the merest rumor of a long-ago black ancestor would of course throw everyone into a tizzy. Given our one-drop rule, confirmation of the ancestry would require Churchill’s racial reclassification.
I get the impression that most foreigners find the one-drop rule to be a very peculiar aspect of American life.
It’s amazing that people are concerned about < 1/8 jewish ancestry. I hope these people are less common than you make it seem.
Does that vid deal with Churchill’s motivations at all? I’m not too informed on WWII Britain.
The last leader of the British Conservative Party was the son of a Romanian Jewish refugee. His predecessor was one-eighth Japanese. No big deal.
& some British PM was fractionally Indian. I forget which.
BRITAIN’S NON-WHITE PRIME MINISTER .
Hitler probably wasn’t 1/4 Jewish either. It’s unknown who his paternal grandfather was, but I think the evidence that he was Jewish is primarily “wouldn’t that be funny.”
Wow, just noticed the (assumed) borat reference in the title.
“Interesting that you’d bother to spend time researching the work of a ‘discredited’ historian.”
– I wouldn’t, except that in this case Kohn and Irving are the only two *published* sources that I could find cited for the Jerome/Jacobson story. It isn’t ‘interesting’ that I should try to check the sources: what else could I do? As for the idea of checking living descendants of Churchill for ‘Jewish’ DNA markers, his grandchildren would have at most 1/16 Jewish ancestry (assuming that Leonard Jerome was fully Jewish and they have no other Jewish ancestors).
Friends,
About 10% of the Roman Empire’s population was Jewish. The majority of the Jews accepted Christianity and melted into the Empire population. Their genes are part of the area’s current population’s genome.
Preceding the Nurnberg laws, the Nazis made a study about Jewish blood in Germany. They concluded that in historical times (say from 1600 on) the number of Jews who left Judaism and assimilated in the German nation was more than double of the actual living Jews. That’s why they stopped at the third generation and then, they even closed eyes on dubious grandparents.
In America Jewish immigrants have been melting for centuries. There are few “old” Jewish families who are Jewish. And there are many thousands who went to America to make a new life and forget the old one: Margret Albright and Kerry and Gov. whatshisname are only three of them. They changed names and identities. Most were never heard of.
So stop this stupid game of searching for Jewish blood.
I think that Churchill’s oppposition to the Nazi’s needed Jewish ancestry on Churchill’s part to be explained is more than a bit daft. Someone who thought that one couldn’t despise the Nazis without referring to Nazi anti Semitism, as if that was the only thing one could hold against them and if they weren’t anti Semites they wouldn’t have been all that bad, is a bit daft too.
Apart from that from obvious ‘in the present’ reasons for being anti Nazi, one needed to look for ‘historical’ or geneological reasons for Churchill’s anti Nazism, the fact that Churchill was descended from John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, the bane of Louis XIV and a more towering figure of his age than Winston was in Winston’s age, is pretty sufficient for his views.
Winston Churchill was perfectly aware of all this, he wrote a 2000+ page biography of him, an excellent book which I heartily recommend, in which he at one point lets loose with a fine withering tirade about periwigged dandies bent on world domination.
Given the truth of the quip by some English WWII era diplomat about, “we’re still fighting Louis XIV”, I think that’s all one needs to know.
Of course Hitler’s sick hate of the Jews has nothing to do with the war with England. Should decide England not to fight, its status would have been that of occupied France, Holland and Norway. A Gauleiter would have taken residence in Buckingham Palace and German soldiers would have started to produce war babies. Simply put, there was no place for England (nor for Poland, Russia, etc.) in a Hitlerian Europe.
I haven’t read Mein Kampf, but according to Wikipedia it shows Hitler had planned all along to conquer France and Russia, but sought to ally with Britain. My guess is that England could have just left Germany for Russia to take care of.
I should have pointed out that Churchill’s living descendants would inherit neither Y chromosomes not Mitochodria from Leonard Jerome. Any genetic ‘markers’ would have to be autosomal.
You are wrong in supposing England could have found a role in Nazi Europe. The English people of that generation thought they had to fight for their lives, and let us assume they knew better. Regarding abandoning Russia, my impression is that was exactly what England did till events turned (Russia started winning). Anyway, the issue now is that crazed religious fanatic in Iran for whom England is the Little Satan and he means it.
Jews have also contributed to the search for Jewish blood in distinguished historical figures, out of a (reasonable or misplaced) sense of pride. As a Jew, I have always enjoyed hearing that such-and-such a noted individual (Churchill, Ringo, Charlie Chaplin, whoever) might have been part Jewish. I don’t know why I care. However, the search for truth should not indulge wishful thinking. It seems that Churchill, the greatest statesman of his age and one of the greatest of any age, was not Jewish at all. That does not change my admiration of him one bit.
“Regarding abandoning Russia, my impression is that was exactly what England did till events turned (Russia started winning).”
– I haven’t researched the details, but I do know that Britain sent many convoys of arms and supplies to Russia via the Arctic Sea, which was the only available route. It was dangerous work, as the ships were vulnerable to U-boats. I guess it might be said that Britain (and the US) should have opened a Western Front earlier than they did, but I leave that question to military experts. The other British-US contribution before D-Day was the bombing campaign against Germany, but that gets criticised for killing German civilians. Can’t win, can you?
I much appreciate this investigation into Churchill’s claimed Jewish ancestry, because I do believe it to be significant. Moreover I am familiar with the problem of a single unreliable source replicating unchecked and leading to erroneous claims like this one seems to be.
However, all your commentators omit three very significant facts:
1. Jews worldwide declared war on Germany in 1933;
2. The Board of Deputies of British Jews paid £50,000 to finance an ‘Anti-Nazi Committee’ (later renamed ‘Focus’) in 1936. That Committee was headed by Churchill.
3. Churchill was undeniably in the pocket (due to his debts) of a figure called Strakosch, who was likely Jewish, and both Churchill and Roosevelt were heavily influenced by Jews, particularly Bernard Baruch. Roosevelt joked about the fact.
The Second World War was a Jewish war, and modern propaganda on the theme (‘Holocaustianity’) is a religion, not history. For example, the official death-toll at Auschwitz is now 1.5 million, so anyone quoting “6 million” is expressing a religious idea.
Irving may be a bit of an oddball but he’s undeniably good. As he says, and I know this from my own experience, all most ‘”historians” do is quote each others’ books. This leads to the sort of error which this article details.
Finally, I invite you to contemplate how much influence £50,000 would have bought in 1936.
Simon Sheppard