Travelers and Fellow Travelers, Then and Now

Five members of Congress last week traveled to a prison in Louisiana to show their solidarity with two Hamas supporters who are awaiting deportation. The Congressional visitors were continuing an unfortunate century-long tradition of politicians and political activists embracing tyrants, terrorists and terror supporters.

In the 1920s, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin welcomed numerous American intellectuals and cultural celebrities. Among them was Isadora Duncan, one of the leading figures in American dance in the 1920s, who returned from Soviet Russia bursting with enthusiasm for the Communist cause. Duncan soon began concluding her performances by waving a red scarf over her head, while shouting, “This is red! So am I! It is the color of life and vigor!”

During the 1930s, Nazi Germany likewise welcomed American visitors. Famed aviator Charles Lindbergh attended the Olympics in Berlin in 1936 as the personal guest of Hitler’s air force chief, Field Marshal Hermann Goering. The Nazis had “done much for the German people,”  Lindbergh declared. At an official state dinner in Berlin in 1938, Lindbergh accepted a prestigious medal from the Nazi regime, the Service Cross of the German Eagle.

Hitler was especially interested in visitors from the American academic community, hoping they would enhance his stature. This sordid story was first chronicled by Prof. Stephen Norwood in his book, The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower.

American University chancellor Joseph Gray returned from a visit to Nazi Germany in 1936 full of praise for the Hitler regime. Gray reported to the American public that German cities were “amazingly clean” and that “everybody was working in Germany.” George Washington University professor Christopher Garnett, who visited Germany in 1934, hailed “[t]he optimism which permeates the Germans, even those who at first opposed the present regime.”

Wesleyan University’s Prof. Paul H. Curts visited Nazi Germany repeatedly in the 1930s. He praised Hitler as “the only man who could offer to Germany what it needed at present,” and marveled at the “quiet, order and discipline” in Germany. Curts dismissed reports of anti-Jewish persecution as “exaggerated,” while adding that some action against the Jews “was possibly justified.” The Wesleyan administration arranged for Prof. Curts to address the entire student body about the wonderful Nazi regime, and named him president of Wesleyan’s Publications Board.

The phenomenon of political travelers and fellow travelers has continued in more recent times. One was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, future U.S. senator Bernie Sanders. In 1988, Sanders and his bride, Jane, spent their honeymoon with a group of activists on a visit to the Soviet Union to promote friendly relations with the Kremlin. Upon their return, Sanders heaped praise on the “friendship and openness” of the “extremely generous and warm” Soviet officials who hosted them. He hailed the Soviet government’s cultural programs for youth, which, he said, “go far beyond what we have in this country.”

Sanders was especially excited that the Kremlin’s trains ran on time. “In Moscow we were extremely impressed by their public transportation system,” he said. “In fact, it was the cleanest, most effective mass transit system that I’ve ever seen in my life…The stations themselves were absolutely beautiful, including many works of art, chandeliers that were beautiful, it was a very, very effective system.”

While Sanders had much to say about the punctuality of Soviet trains, he had nothing to say about the vicious mistreatment of his fellow-Jews behind the Iron Curtain. He never mentioned the plight of the three million Soviet Jews who were being persecuted and prevented from emigrating. He never spoke about the grueling new restrictions the Soviet authorities had imposed on Jews just weeks earlier.

That same year, five American Jews stirred controversy by meeting and praising PLO terrorist leader Yasir Arafat in Stockholm. One of the visitors later had a dramatic change of heart, however. In October 2000, in the midst of an Arafat-directed wave of violence against Israel, Menachem Z. Rosensaft, president of the U.S. Labor Zionist Alliance, wrote: “I was wrong, so many of us were wrong…for allowing ourselves to be convinced that Arafat ever actually wanted peace with Israel…We believed him when he proclaimed an end to terrorism. We were wrong.”

Perhaps one day, similar words of remorse will be heard from the American Jewish officials who enjoyed all-expenses-paid visits to Qatar in 2017-2018 and praised Qatar’s emir despite his regime’s massive financial assistance to Hamas and Qatar’s harboring of senior Hamas leaders. It was later reported that Qatari agents made significant donations to some Jewish organizations and individuals.

Political travelers and fellow-travelers, then and now, have left a long and dishonorable legacy of giving aid and comfort to regimes and individuals who deserve to be ostracized, not embraced. It’s unfortunate that a handful of members of Congress have now joined their ranks.