In 1934, Gertrude Stein was invited to the White House to have tea with Eleanor Roosevelt. Stein was on a triumphant lecture tour across the United States, following the success of her bestselling Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and her fashionable opera Four Saints in Three Acts. The American press proclaimed, “Gertie is Gertie is Gertie!” In the thirties, Gertrude Stein was America’s quirky darling.
How times have changed.
On May 1, 2012, the celebration of Jewish Heritage Month began with an official statement from the White House: “From Aaron Copland to Albert Einstein, Gertrude Stein to Justice Louis Brandeis, generations of Jewish Americans have brought to bear some of our country’s greatest achievements and forever enriched our national life.” One day later, Stein’s name was no longer wanted in the celebration because of allegations that she survived the Holocaust in France as a Nazi collaborator. Stein, the supersized lesbian “genius” of Jewish origins, has always been controversial, but now she was considered “unkosher.” The White House staff dropped her on the sly by removing all individual names from the Celebration of Jewish Heritage Month.
