On Jews and Antisemitism

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 well-known 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.