The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Jewish Press

Abstract This article explores the overlooked response from the Jewish press to the first 1903 edition of what became known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion during the period when a second edition became public in 1905. The study recovers and analyzes a public apology that its second publisher wrote to the Jewish people, caricatures, and carnivalesque ditties. The results indicate that the first edition is not what we think it is – a rabid antisemitic text – but rather a revolutionary anti-liberalism text that the state and the secret police tried to ban, retract, and override with new editions .