Litwin
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- #21
Marx believed that Europe should recreate and arm congressional Poland and Belarus to guard Europe against "Asiatic barbarism under Muscovite direction", saying in 1867![]()
Marx had Jewish ancestry but he did not consider himself to be a Jew after growing up as a white Christian, explaining why shared common Jewish stereotypes with racist Germans at the time.
Marx's family was originally non-religious Jewish but had converted formally to Christianity before his birth. His maternal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Trier's rabbis since 1723, a role taken by his grandfather Meier Halevi Marx.[16] His father, as a child known as Herschel, was the first in the line to receive a secular education.
Prior to his son's birth and after the abrogation of Jewish emancipation in the Rhineland,[17] Herschel converted from Judaism to join the state Evangelical Church of Prussia, taking on the German forename Heinrich over the Yiddish Herschel.[18]
"There is but one alternative for Europe. Either Asiatic barbarism, under Muscovite direction, will burst around its head like an avalanche, or else it must re-establish Poland, thus putting twenty million heroes between itself and Asia and gaining a breathing spell for the accomplishment of its social regeneration. "