Like many Americans I was struck by a New York Times headline reading: "HISTORIAN’S REPORT BLAMES SWISS FOR BARRING JEWS DURING WAR." According to the Times, "Swiss officials refused entry to thousands of Jewish refugees even after it was known they faced almost certain death." What the Swiss officials did not refuse entry to was Jewish money. Despite deliberately misleading statements and the famous langues du bois of Swiss bankers, the historians’ report identified over 54,000 still-active accounts the Swiss had stolen during the course of the war.

Unlike many Americans I lived in Switzerland during this Swiss banking scandal and witnessed first-hand Swiss anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. In the resort town of Crans-Montana where I lived, grocery store managers posted signs urging the boycotting of American products. Newspapers branded former Senator Al D’Amato, who was in the forefront of the move to bring Swiss bankers to account, as a race traitor with a sick vendetta against the "innocent" Swiss people. I witnessed Swiss citizens spitting in disgust as Orthodox Jews on holiday walked past them, or moving to different bus seats when Jews sat near them. An endless stream of Jewish jokes filled the air of nearly every dinner occasion I attended, none of which I care to repeat.

When I filed a grievance against the Swiss Hotel Association’s Les Roches School of Hotel Management to recoup the three month’s salary the school had screwed me out of when we parted ways, their lawyer, unaware that I parley-vooed, said in disgust, "Connard americains; ils ont assez de notre argent." We have enough of their money? The modern Confederation Helvetica was built upon the blood-spattered money of murdered Jews.

The last couple of years have been tough ones for the Swiss. Their fantasy public relations image as a neutral, cuckoo-clock producing, chocolate- and cheese-eating Alpine paradise has been exposed as a carefully-crafted lie. The Swiss banking scandal, followed by the Swiss Olympic Committee bribery scandal, the fallout over Jean Ziegler’s The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead, (Ziegler, a member of the Swiss Parliament, was charged with treason for writing this book) and the recent downfall of Swiss Air, have exposed the Swiss for the nasty, money-obsessed and yes, anti-Semitic people they are, inhabitants of a country run by "international bankers and usurers," to quote Ezra Pound, my favorite anti-Semitic poet.

Or as Edgar Bronfman of the World Jewish Congress put it, "the Swiss were the biggest bastards of them all."

Other than the recent terrorist actions and the aprés-attack fundamentalist Muslim propaganda, anti-Semitism has all but disappeared from the American consciousness. But in Europe, anti-Semitism is still very much in vogue, as it has been nearly non-stop since the Crusades. The Swiss may have recently rejected becoming members of the EU but they’re as rabid anti-Semitic as most of Europe.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a hard-core, torah-waving, Leviticus-bound Jew. I’m not bar-mitzvah’d, I don’t speak Hebrew and I’ve never been to Israel. I think I’ve set foot in a synagogue less than a half-dozen times. I date neurotic shiksas. I drive on Saturdays, eat cloven-hooved animals and shellfish, listen to Wagner and Strauss and read Heidegger, Celine and Ol’ Ez. So this is not a straight-jacketed rant of the righteous against the barbarians.

But after a thousand non-stop years of Christian destructiveness, anyone who believes that Nazi genocide was an aberration need only visit the Musèe d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme in Paris.

I’ve been several times, but the guidebook-wielding crowd is sticking with the Louvre, the D’Orsay, the reopened Centre Pompidou and, to a lesser extent, the Musèe Picasso. Every time I’ve been, this Musèe has been nearly empty, not a black, Hispanic, Asian or Arab face among the small groups of Jewish visitors.

This is truly shameful, because the Musèe is not just another monument to Judaism’s darkest hour. It is not a depressing Holocaust exhibit meant to make the goyim feel guilty or another nauseating self-promoting and profiteering cultural product like Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, or Roberto Benigni’s La Vita è Bella, where we can all feel warm and fuzzy about the six million.

No, this Musèe is a celebration of Jewish European history and culture, as well as a hard look at the systematic Western attempt to eliminate that culture.

The Musèe is located in the 3^rd arrondissment, on the edge of the Marais district, where the Orthodox and the unorthodox live in uneasy proximity. Around the corner is the old Jewish ghetto centered on rue des Rosiers—as well as gay bars, cafès, newsstands and clothing shops. Village people and tribal elders jostle in line for schwarma at L’As du Falafel or pastries at Frances Finkelsztajn. By the way, I recommend the fromage blanc, laced with honey and raisins at Sacha Finkelsztajn, the small Yiddish bakery next to the laundromat.

A stroll down rue des Rosiers is an important prerequisite for a visit to the Musèe. You’ll see why a bit later. But now, pass through the metal detector, stop for the guard with sonic wand in hand and then walk into the courtyard. Buy a ticket and pick up one of the cellphone-style audio guides. Unlike the audio guides at most museums, this one is actually useful and it’s free.

Don’t worry, there are no Holocaust faces, hollowed by hunger and inhumanity, waiting to haunt you. Instead, there are rooms full of menorahs, torahs, traditional garb and historical exhibits. I learn, for example, that Arabs and Jews coexisted quite peacefully in Spain throughout the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries—that is, until the Christians arrived and kicked the Muslims out. By 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and the Jews were on the move as well, this time to Poland and Russia and France.

I also learn that the French Revolutionary government was the first to grant Jews full human rights and citizenship, a perk that lasted until the French rolled over and played dead in 1940.

There are wooden models of Polish shtetl life. These models, of course, are all that are left of the shtetl, courtesy of Russian pograms and Nazi final solutions. I’m reminded of Philip Roth’s novel, Operation Shylock, where a deranged dopplegänger of Roth, promoting Diasporism over Zionism, tries to convince Israelies to return to Eastern Europe, claiming crowds of Poles will be lined up at the rail stations holding signs reading "WE WANT OUR JEWS BACK!" Yeah, right.

The only hints of these persecutions in the Musèe are a list of the names of the Jews deported from Paris, and photos of the rue des Rosiers during that deportation. Notice how familiar these photos look: I told you that earlier stroll would come in handy. After viewing these images it is impossible to walk down rue des Rosiers without seeing yellow stars and columns of French Jewish citizens lined up on the sidewalk.

But in keeping with the celebratory focus of the Musèe, this exhibit leads downstairs into a fine collection of modernist paintings, albeit paintings confiscated by the Nazis. Picasso, Chagall, Modigliani, Braque, Klee, Miro, each and every one waiting to be claimed by some Holocaust survivor or their descendants. Just like those 54,000 Swiss bank accounts.

Finally, a collection of photos documenting the founding of Israel and Christendom’s worst nightmare: Jews With Guns. No wonder the peasants in the Chagall painting are dancing happily among the stars.

On my way back to rue Saint Antoine, I turn down rue Tournette, blocked to through traffic, where yarmulked Jews congregating at the Ècole Théophile Gaultier, the police and military presence remind that the threat to mischief, or murder or extermination is a constant in the life of the European Jew.

Back in America, in the hills and valleys of Idaho and Montana, neo-Nazi groups and muddle-headed militiamen continue to blame the Jews for the world’s ills. Cretins like Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan push urban hatred as their ticket to fame. In the Middle East, idiot fundamentalists claim the Jews were the ones really responsible for September 11^th. Yeah, right.

Here in Europe, I’ve just moved from Italy to Germany, to a city less than 100 kilometers from Dachau. A sign on the building where my bank is located informs me this was the site of the old Synagogue, destroyed in 1938 during an all-night party called Kristallnacht. Sitting at Café Vienna with a milschcafe, I read in the paper about the continuing downward spiral of the Swiss economy. It looks as if Credit Suisse could be the next to feel the axe. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before the Swiss blame the Jews for their economic meltdown. Now that’s one crisis I wouldn’t mind claiming credit for.