Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism, sometimes called
history’s oldest hatred, is hostility or prejudice against Jewish people. The
Nazi Holocaust is history’s most extreme example of anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism did not begin with Adolf Hitler: Anti-Semitic attitudes date back
to ancient times. In much of Europe throughout the Middle Ages, Jewish people
were denied citizenship and forced to live in ghettos. Anti-Jewish riots called
pogroms swept the Russian Empire during the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, and anti-Semitic incidents have increased in parts of Europe, the
Middle East and North America in the last several years.
The term anti-Semitism was first
popularized by German journalist Wilhelm Marr in 1879 to describe hatred or
hostility toward Jews. The history of anti-Semitism, however, goes back much
further.
Hostility against Jews may date
back nearly as far as Jewish history. In the ancient empires of Babylonia,
Greece, and Rome, Jews—who originated in the ancient kingdom of Judea—were
often criticized and persecuted for their efforts to remain a separate cultural
group rather than taking on the religious and social customs of their
conquerors. With the rise of Christianity, anti-Semitism spread throughout much
of Europe. Early Christians vilified Judaism in a bid to gain more converts.
They accused Jews of outlandish acts such as “blood libel”—the kidnapping and
murder of Christian children to use their blood to make Passover bread. These
religious attitudes were reflected in anti-Jewish economic, social and political
policies that pervaded into the European Middle Ages.
Anti-Semitism in Medieval Europe
Many of the anti-Semitic
practices seen in Nazi Germany actually have their roots in medieval Europe. In
many European cities, Jews were confined to certain neighborhoods called
ghettos. Some countries also required Jews to distinguish themselves from
Christians with a yellow badge worn on their garment, or a special hat called a
Judenhut. Some Jews became prominent in banking and moneylending, because early
Christianity didn’t permit moneylending for interest. This resulted in economic
resentment which forced the expulsion of Jews from several European countries
including France, Germany, Portugal and Spain during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. Jews were denied citizenship and civil liberties,
including religious freedom throughout much of medieval Europe.
Poland was one notable exception.
In 1264, Polish Prince Bolesław the Pious issued a decree allowing Jews
personal, political and religious freedoms. Jews did not receive citizenship
and gain rights throughout much of Western Europe, however, until the late
1700s and 1800s.
Russian Pogroms
Throughout the 1800s and early
1900s, Jews throughout the Russian Empire and other European countries faced
violent, anti-Jewish riots called pogroms. Pogroms were typically perpetrated
by a local non-Jewish population against their Jewish neighbors, though pogroms
were often encouraged and aided by the government and police forces. In the
wake of the Russian Revolution, an estimated 1,326 pogroms are thought to have
taken place across Ukraine alone, leaving nearly half a million Ukrainian Jews
homeless and killing an estimated 30,000 to 70,000 people between 1918 and
1921. Pogroms in Belarus and Poland also killed tens of thousands of people.
Nazi Anti-Semitism
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rose
to power in Germany in the 1930s on a platform of German nationalism, racial
purity and global expansion. Hitler, like many anti-Semites in Germany, blamed
the Jews for the country’s defeat in World War I, and for the social and economic
upheaval that followed. Early on, the Nazis undertook an “Aryanization” of
Germany, in which Jews were dismissed from civil service, Jewish-owned
businesses were liquidated and Jewish professionals, including doctors and
lawyers, were stripped of their clients.
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935
introduced many anti-Semitic policies and outlined the definition of who was
Jewish based on ancestry. Nazi propagandists had swayed the German public into
believing that Jews were a separate race. According to the Nuremberg Laws, Jews
were no longer German citizens and had no right to vote.
Kristallnacht
Jews became routine targets of
stigmatization and persecution as a result. This culminated in a
state-sponsored campaign of street violence known as Kristallnacht (the “night
of broken glass”), which took place between November 9-10, 1938. In two days,
more than 250 synagogues across the Reich were burned and 7,000 Jewish
businesses looted. The morning after Kristallnacht, 30,000 Jewish men were
arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Holocaust
Prior to Kristallnacht, Nazi
policies toward Jews had been antagonistic but primarily non-violent. After the
incident, conditions for Jews in Nazi Germany became progressively worse as
Hitler and the Nazis began to implement their plan to exterminate the Jewish
people, which they referred to as the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem.”
Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis would use mass killing centers called
concentration camps to carry out the systematic murder of roughly 6 million
European Jews in what would become known as the Holocaust.
Anti-Semitism in the Middle East
Anti-Semitism in the Middle East
has existed for millennia, but increased greatly since World War II. Following
the establishment of a Jewish State in Israel in 1948, the Israelis fought for
control of Palestine against a coalition of Arab states. At the end of the War,
Israel kept much of Palestine, resulting in the forced exodus of roughly
700,000 Muslim Palestinians from their homes. The conflict created resentment
over Jewish nationalism in Muslim-majority nations. As a result, anti-Semitic
activities grew in many Arab nations, causing most Jews to leave over the next
few decades. Today, many North African and Middle Eastern nations have little
Jewish population remaining.
Anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States
Anti-Semitic hate crimes have
spiked in Europe in recent years, especially in France, which has the world’s
third largest Jewish population. In 2012, three children and a teacher were
shot by a radical Islamist gunman in Toulouse, France. In the wake of the mass
shooting at the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015, four
Jewish hostages were murdered at a Kosher supermarket by an Islamic terrorist.
The U.K. logged a record 1,382
hate crimes against Jews in 2017, an increase of 34 percent from previous
years. In the United States, anti-Semitic incidents rose 57 percent in 2017—the
largest single-year increase ever recorded by the Anti-Defamation League, a
Jewish civil rights advocacy organization.
