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Casimir Pilenas, a.k.a. Casimir Palmer, and a.k.a., Casimir Palmer-Pilenas, was a private investigator, a British intelligence agent, and a "spotter" for Scotland Yard.
According to study by Rita T. Kronenbitter, Pilenas was spotter for Scotland Yard and was recruited by Pyotr Rachkovsky as an informant for Russian Okhrana to work among the Latvian terrorists. [1] [ clarification needed ]
In 1911 Casimir Pilenas testified at the Houndsditch murders trial. His occupation was given as interpreter in Thames Police Court. [2]
In 1917, as a British intelligence informant, he caused the arrest of Leon Trotsky in Nova Scotia by British naval authorities acting on instructions from Britain's Admiralty's Naval Intelligence Division. Palmer-Pilenas accused Trotsky of carrying $10,000 which he alleged had been provided by pro-German sources. But no such money was found on Trotsky, or his five companions at the time of his arrest and subsequent internment.
John Higham, in his work, Strangers in the Land, says:
The "Protocols" reached America in 1918 through Czarist army officers who had come to this country on a military mission, notably through Lieutenant Boris Brasol. Brasol foisted upon the Military Intelligence Division of the United States Army an English translation of the "Protocols" and started typewritten copies circulating in other influential circles in Washington, D.C. A renegade associate, one Casimir Pilenas, tried to extort $50,000 for the manuscript from the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
In making this claim Higham relies on archival material cited in his endnotes, material described as records of the AJC.
However, this claim of "extortion" is not supported by the file on Pilenas held by the AJC. And in fact these records show that his motives were not regarded as malicious by the AJC, and that he apparently acted as an informer for the AJC, regarding antisemitism, and antisemites, for some years thereafter, and that he apparently wanted to sell his services, and the records which he obtained, to the ADL. He also sought assistance from the AJC in having his material on antisemitism published.
In 1923 Pilenas wrote comment to NYT on Lithuanian annexation of Memel. [3]
In 1933 Casimir Palmer, a resident of 11 West 108th Street in Manhattan at the time, appeared as witness in court during the hearings in the Russian Volunteer Fleet Corporation case. Palmer was called as a witness by Charles Recht, who assailed credibility of Boris Brasol, expert witness in the case.
On the stand Pilenas-Palmer described himself as a former agent of the British military intelligence service and as a former employee of the United States military intelligence division. He answered questions regarding his investigation of reports made by Boris Brasol to the War Department "regarding alleged radical activities by Jews during the war." Pilenas testified that he requested and received from Brasol a copy of the "Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion." Pilenas further testified that Brasol had written on several occasions to the US intelligence department concerning "radical movements among the Jews". [4]
He allegedly worked as a "government intelligence agent" and by 1937 attempted to expose the link between Henry Ford and the Nazis. Says Albert Lee, in his Henry Ford and the Jews:
Detective Casimir Palmer who had been involved as a government intelligence agent since Boris Brasol brought the Protocols to America, wrote to Professor Nathan Isaacs in 1937 that "Henry Ford and his subordinates Ernest G. Liebold, Harry Bennett, and others have turned the Ford Motor Company Chemical Department into the headquarters of the Nazis here. [p. 95]
Antisemitism has increased greatly in the Arab world since the beginning of the 20th century, for several reasons: the dissolution and breakdown of the Ottoman Empire and traditional Islamic society; European influence, brought about by Western imperialism and Arab Christians; Nazi propaganda and relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world; resentment over Jewish nationalism; the rise of Arab nationalism; and the widespread proliferation of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.
The Dearborn Independent, also known as The Ford International Weekly, was a weekly newspaper established in 1901, and published by Henry Ford from 1919 through 1927. The paper reached a circulation of 900,000 by 1925, second only to the New York Daily News, largely due to a quota system for promotion imposed on Ford dealers. Lawsuits regarding antisemitic material published in the paper caused Ford to close it, and the last issue was published in December 1927. The publication's title was derived from the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan.
The Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order, usually called Guard Department and commonly abbreviated in modern sources as Okhrana was a secret-police force of the Russian Empire and part of the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in the late 19th century and early 20th century, aided by the Special Corps of Gendarmes.
Vladimir Lvovich Burtsev was a revolutionary activist, scholar, publisher and editor of several Russian language periodicals. He became famous by exposing a great number of agents provocateurs, notably Yevno Azef in 1908. Because of his own revolutionary activities and his harsh criticism of the imperial regime, including personal criticism of emperor Nicholas II, he was imprisoned several times in various European countries. In the course of his life, Burtsev fought oppressive policies from Tsarism in Imperial Russia, followed by the Bolsheviks and later Adolf Hitler's National Socialism.
An informant is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law enforcement world, where they are officially known as confidential human source (CHS), or criminal informants (CI). It can also refer pejoratively to someone who supplies information without the consent of the involved parties. The term is commonly used in politics, industry, entertainment, and academia.
Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky was chief of Okhrana, the secret service in Imperial Russia. He was based in Paris from 1885 to 1902.
The International Jew is a four-volume set of antisemitic booklets or pamphlets originally published and distributed in the early 1920s by the Dearborn Publishing Company, an outlet owned by Henry Ford, the American industrialist and automobile manufacturer.
Michael Hagemeister is a German historian and Slavist, an authority on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and on Sergei Nilus.
Natalie de Bogory (1887–1939) is primarily known for her work in translating from the Russian language into the English language, and subsequently distributing and participating in having published the first or second American edition in the United States of the document known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. There were two different editions printed in the United States in 1920. The earlier, entitled The Protocols and World Revolution, associated with Boris Brasol and published by Small, Maynard and Company. The later, entitled Praemonitus Praemunitus associated with Harris A. Houghton and published by the Beckwith Company.
Howell Arthur Keir Gwynne, CH was a Welsh author, newspaper editor of the London Morning Post from 1911 to 1937.
There have been different opinions among historians with regard to the extent of antisemitism in America's past and how American antisemitism contrasted with its European counterpart. Earlier students of American Jewish life minimized the presence of antisemitism in the United States, which they considered a late and alien phenomenon that arose on the American scene in the late 19th century. More recently however, scholars have asserted that no period in American Jewish history was free from antisemitism. The debate about the significance of antisemitism during different periods of American history has continued to the present day.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion is a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. The hoax was plagiarized from several earlier sources, some not antisemitic in nature. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. It played a key part in popularizing belief in an international Jewish conspiracy.
Sergey Petrovich Degayev was a Russian revolutionary terrorist, Okhrana agent, and the murderer of inspector of secret police Georgy Sudeykin. After emigrating to the United States, Degayev took the name Alexander Pell and became a prominent American mathematician, the founder of school of Engineering at the University of South Dakota. The Dr. Alexander Pell scholarship is named in his honor.
Ulrich Fleischhauer was a leading publisher of antisemitic books and news articles reporting on a perceived Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory and "nefarious plots" by clandestine Jewish interests to dominate the world.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan to achieve global domination. The text was fabricated in the Russian Empire, and was first published in 1903. While there is continued popularity of The Protocols in nations from South America to Asia, since the defeat of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in World War II, governments or political leaders in most parts of the world have generally avoided claims that The Protocols represent factual evidence of a real Jewish conspiracy. The exception to this is the Middle East, where a large number of Arab and Muslim regimes and leaders have endorsed them as authentic. Past endorsements of The Protocols from Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Iraqi President Arif, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya, among other political and intellectual leaders of the Arab world, are echoed by 21st century endorsements from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sa'id Sabri, and Hamas, to the education ministry of Saudi Arabia.
Antisemitism in the Russian Empire included numerous pogroms and the designation of the Pale of Settlement from which Jews were forbidden to migrate into the interior of Russia, unless they converted to the Russian Orthodox state religion.
Economic antisemitism is antisemitism that uses stereotypes and canards that are based on negative perceptions or assertions of the economic status, occupations or economic behaviour of Jews, at times leading to various governmental policies and laws that target or which disproportionately impact the economic status, occupations or behaviour of Jews.
Ernest G. Liebold was the business representative and personal secretary of Henry Ford. A fervent antisemite, he took an active part in the antisemitic campaign conducted by the industrialist's weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, from 1920 to 1927. He was also put under investigation by the United States Department of War for being a suspected German spy during the First World War.
Albert Sonnichsen was an American journalist, author and adventurer.
Belief in an international Jewish conspiracy or world Jewish conspiracy is a conspiracy theory that typically claims that a malevolent, usually global Jewish circle conspired for world domination. It has been described as "the most widespread and durable conspiracy theory of the twentieth century" and "one of the most widespread and long-running conspiracy theories". The conspiracy theory's content is extremely variable, which helps explain its wide distribution and long duration. It was popularized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century especially by the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Among the beliefs that posit an international Jewish conspiracy are Jewish Bolshevism, Cultural Marxism, Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory, and Holocaust denial. The Nazi leadership's belief in an international Jewish conspiracy that it blamed for starting World War II and controlling the Allied powers was key to their decision to launch the Final Solution.