Anti-Semitic Cartoon from 1892

I have been reading Maxim Gorky’s Fragments from My Diary (Заметки из дневника) published in 1924. Here are two excerpts.

SUBSTITUTES FOR MONKEYS

Professor Z., the bacteriologist, once told me the following story.

‘One day, talking to General B., I happened to mention that I was anxious to obtain some monkeys for my experiments. The General immediately said, quite seriously:

‘“What about Jews—wouldn’t they do? I’ve got some Jews here, spies that are going to be hanged anyway—you’re quite welcome to them if they are of any use to you.”

‘And without waiting for an answer he sent his orderly to find out how many spieas were awaiting execution.

‘I tried to explain to His Excellency that men would not be suitable for my experiments, but he was quite unable to understand me, and opening his eyes very wide he said:

‘“Yes, but men are cleverer than monkeys, aren’t they? If you inoculate a man with poison he will be able to tell you what he feels, whereas a money won’t.”

‘Just then the orderly came in and reported that there was not a single Jew among the men arrested for spying—only Rumanians and gypsies.

‘“What a pity!” said the General. “I suppose gypsies won’t do either? … What a pity …!”’

The second is a paragraph excerpted from a fragment labelled:

ANTI-SEMITISM

I have read, thoroughly and attentively, a number of books which try to justify anti-Semitism. It is a hard and even repugnant duty to read books written with a definitely ugly and immoral design: to brand a nation, a whole nation. A remarkable task indeed! And I never found anything in those books but a moral ignorance, an angry squeal, a wild beast’s bellowing, and a grudging, envious grinding of teeth. Thus armed, there is nothing to prevent one from proving that Slavs, and all the other nations as well are also incurably depraved. And is not this the reason for the violent hatred of the Jews, that they, of all races of mixed blood, are the ones who have preserved comparatively the greatest purity of outward life as well as of the spirit? Is there not more perhaps of the ‘Man’ in the Jew than there is in the anti-Semite?