George Orwell’s relationship to Jews has been a recurring topic
in various essays and articles. Texts with an antisemitic slant,
as well as texts with a determined rejection of antisemitism, from
different periods of his career, are quoted.
However, this does not allow for a reliable overall picture because
often only wellknown passages appear while Orwell’s contradictory,
less well-known statements are overlooked or simply ignored.
This comprehensive and extensively annotated compilation of texts
by Orwell, an author who is respected and admired for always defending
human rights without restraint, regardless of who exercised power,
is intended to give an idea of what he actually wrote on Jews and
antisemitism and how it was discussed.
It covers his fictional and non-fictional writing from his early
works on and presents the obvious antisemitic streak at the beginning,
the war-time publications denouncing the atrocities against Jews
by Germans, his 1945 essay “Anti-Semitism in Britain”, his experiences
as a war reporter in Germany when he was confronted with Jews who
had survived and defeated Germans, and his comments about the increasing
conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine under the British Mandate. The
chronological order of this compilation facilitates following Orwell’s
evolving attitudes to Jews and antisemitism.
|