Jürgen Graf

Introduction to the German translation of
Douglas Reed’s book
“The Controversy of Zion”
By Jürgen Graf

1. The Controversy of Zion

Douglas Reeds monumental work has two evident weaknesses which should be pointed out from the outset:

Reeds references are insufficient. For example, the title of Josef Kastein's “History and Destiny of the Jews” (1933), his most frequently quoted source, does not appear anywhere in the original English text; he simply keeps mentioning “Dr. Kastein's book”, and leaves it to the reader to find the title in the (surprisingly meager) bibliography in the appendix. In such cases I, as the translator, could correct that and insert the relevant book titles in the text. I could not find out on which page the quotations in question are to be found, for such information is not to be found in Reed's text, and the purchase of the original texts would have involved unreasonable expenses. Similarly with the newspaper articles: here one must be content when Reed mentions the name of the newspaper in question, and ideally also the date on which the quoted article was published. Often he gives as his source “A South African newspaper” which makes it impossible to trace the quotation.

In the frequent quotations from The Old Testament, especially in the first chapter, Reed typically mentions that it comes from, for example, “The Book of Leviticus” of “from The Book of Ezekiel”.  As a translation back from the English text was out of the question, I spent many days in finding the passages in question, and thus got to know The Old Testament better.