Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
Laughter From the Tomb: From the Files of Eugene Blum
Dedicated to Zev Yaroslavsky, Eli Broad, Marc Stern and Barry Sanders
By Albert Friedman
July 13, 2001
The sound you hear is laughter from the tomb of Richard Wagner, the patron saint of Nazism.
“What would I have done without the Jews?” he asks, chortling. “I derided their appearance, claimed they smelled bad, judged them decadent, craven, degenerate, crass, money-grubbing, shallow, pestilential, impious, incapable of creating great art, and, above all, I advocated their annihilation. I wrote and published countless articles lambasting them. I inspired a future generation of my countrymen to destroy them and their works.
“Yet while I lived, they swarmed around me, as I once wrote, ‘like flies,’ flocked to performances of my operas, lent me money (which I did not bother to repay), staged and directed my operas and even sang in them, and now they still honor me and support my art! They have always befriended me, defended me, served me, fostered my works. The fact that I am so highly honored posthumously is due, at least in some measure, to the zeal and enthusiasm of legions of this abominable and accursed race. So I say, ‘Hail to the Jews! Long may they suffer.’ ”
More laughter from the tomb.
Dedication by CJD
