U.S. museum exhibit focuses on anti-Semitic 'Protocols'

[Behind the Aegis]

WASHINGTON - A century-old forgery used to justify ill-treatment of Jews in Czarist Russia and widely circulated by the Nazis is distributed even today in many languages to stoke hatred of Israel, says an exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

Colorfully bound editions of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" have appeared recently in Mexico and in Japan, where there are few Jews, says exhibit historian Daniel Greene. High-school texts in Syria, Lebanon and schools run by the Palestinian Authority use the book as history, he says.

Its 24 chapters profess to record discussions by Jewish leaders of plans to take over the world. Historians have traced parallels in the text to a 19th-century French book, directed against supporters of Emperor Napoleon III, which does not mention Jews.

"The Internet has about 500,000 sites where the book is discussed - about half and half for and against," Greene estimated.


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