Happy 100th Birthday to Roald Dahl — Beloved Author and Vile Anti-Semite
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Born on September 13, 1916, Roald Dahl, the beloved author of “Matilda” and “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” would have turned 100 today. It’s an anniversary we mark with admiration and a bit of uncertainty as well. For, aside from his brilliant imaginaton and wicked sense of humor, Dahl was also something of an unrepentant anti-Semite.
In 1983, he told the New Statesman, “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason. I mean, if you and I were in a line moving towards what we knew were gas chambers, I’d rather have a go at taking one of the guards with me; but they [the Jews] were always submissive.”
In 1990, he told the Independent, “I am certainly anti-Israel, and I have become anti-Semitic.”
In his biography of Roald Dahl, Jeremy Treglown wrote that Dahl once complained about the number of Jews in the Curzon House Club and, when people objected to Dahl’s outburst, reportedly told them, “Go home if you don’t like it.” And, Treglown reported further that after the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon, Dahl wrote, “we all started hating the Jews.”
Still, in his “authorized biography” of Dahl, Donald Sturrock wrote in “Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl” that Dahl said he had “quite a few pints of Jewish blood” in his veins. Apparently, he made this dubious claim with regard to his Norwegian grandmother
On the subject of another supremely gifted author, Salman Rushdie, Dahl was once quoted as saying, “Tell him he’s a sh—.”
One might well have said something similar about Mr. Dahl.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
