The Columbia University Press announced today the publication of an historical study by Dr. John Shelton Curtiss exposing the notorious Protocols of Zion as forged documents shot through with plagiarisms from earlier French and Russian writings. The Protocols, first made public in 1903, purport to set forth secret plans of Jewish leaders to enslave the world and have furnished propaganda for anti-Semitic movements.
Dr. Curtiss, who has taught modern European history at Columbia and other New York universities and is now on leave of absence from his post as assistant archivist at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N. Y., examined the documents with modern historical methods. Thirteen prominent historians, the Columbia Press said, concurred in his conclusions as establishing beyond doubt that the protocols were “frank and pernicious forgeries.”
“The protocols,” Dr. Curtiss said, “are an anonymous work with no convincing indication that they were produced by Jewish leaders.” Dr. Curtiss cited several French and Russian works which he said probably were the sources for many of the ideas in the protocols. He said that the importance of the Russian sources was heightened by testimony that the protocols actually were composed in Paris by members of the Russian political police.
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