Page "The Thirteenth Tribe" Paragraph 6

Koestler biographer Michael Scammell writes that Koestler told French biologist Pierre Debray-Ritzen he " was convinced that if he could prove that the bulk of Eastern European Jews ( the ancestors of today's Ashkenazim ) were descended from the Khazars, the racial basis for anti-Semitism would be removed and anti-Semitism itself could disappear ".

According to George Urban, Koestler's desire to connect Ashkenazi Jews with Khazars was " based on a tacit belief that the intellectual brilliance of and international influence of Hungarians and Jews, especially Hungarian Jews or Jewish-Hungarians, was due to some unexplained but clearly ancient affinity between the two peoples ".