This "parchment document in Hebrew" has never existed! The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is a fraudulent document which served as a pretext and rationale for anti-Semitism and for anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic propaganda in the first half of the 20th century. It still does in Islamic and Christian extremist circles which keep reprinting and distributing it.
It is, however, a 'codeword' for anti-Semitic behavior and action. Mention of "The Elders" and there is no other plausible explanation, save that of inciting ill-will and racist thoughts, words, and deeds.
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion purports to be the transactions of a series of 24 (in other versions, 27) meetings held in Basel, Switzerland, at the time of the first Zionist congress (1897). At that meeting, Jews and Freemasons (the old Judeo-Masonic saw) were said to have made plans to disrupt Christian civilization and create a world government (yes, that old saw too!) under their joint rule. Liberalism and socialism were to be the means of subverting Christendom; if subversion failed, all the capitals of Europe were to be sabotaged.
The so-called Protocols appeared for the very first time in Russia in 1903, in abbreviated form, as an article in the newspaper Znamia ("the Banner") and subsequently (1905) as an addendum to a religious tract by Serge Nilus, a Tsarist civil servant. They were translated into German, French, English, and other European languages and soon came to be a classic of anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic literature. In the United States, Henry Ford's private newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, often cited them as evidence of an alleged Jewish threat to the United States and the world.
The spurious character of the Protocols was first revealed in 1921 by Philip Graves of The Times (London), who demonstrated their striking resemblance to a satire on Napoleon III by the French lawyer Maurice Joly, published in 1864 and entitled Dialogue aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu ("Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu"). Subsequent investigation, particularly by the Russian historian Vladimir Burtsev, revealed that the Protocols were forgeries compounded by officials of the Russian secret police out of the satire of Joly, as well as out of a fantastic novel (Biarritz) by Hermann Goedsche (1868) and other sources.
