HISTORY OF ANTI-SEMITISM

"The Nazis did not discard the past, they built on it. They did not begin a development. They completed it."

    In 63 B. C., the Romans conquered Jerusalem, center of the Jewish homeland. The first religious groups persecuted by the Romans were the Christians, charged with being heretics (or believers in a false religion). Initially, the Romans allowed the Jews to practice their religion freely, but this did not last. The Jews were ordered to worship Roman gods. Jews resisted, but division among Jews followed, one side insisting on orthodoxy, the other side (including Jesus) arguing that Jews must be willing to adapt. After the death of Christ, his followers renounced Judaism and established Christianity.

    In 72 A. D., the Romans expelled the Jews from Palestine. The Jews settled in North Africa, Spain, and eastern and western Europe. For the Jewish people, life outside of Palestine was called the Diaspora. At the start of each Jewish New Year, Jews in the Diaspora would toast one another and promise, "Next year in Jerusalem." It appeared a forlorn hope.

    In the early fourth century, Constantine the Great made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. Anti-Semitism became a threat to Jewish existence.

THE MYTHS

    The theological basis for anti-Semitism, the account of Christ's crucifixion, is found in the New Testament, St. Matthew 27.
 

"And the governor [Pilate] said, 'Why, what evil hath he [Christ] done?' But they [the Jews] cried out the more, saying, 'Let him be crucified.'

When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, 'I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.'

Then answered all the people, and said, 'His blood be on us, and on our children.'"

    In 1965, the Second Vatican Council established that the Jewish people were not to be held responsible for the death of Christ.

    The so-called "blood libel" against the Jewish people originated in Norwich, England, in about 1140. A superstitious priest and an insane monk charged a local Jewish man with killing a Christian child in order to procure Christian blood for the preparation of matzo bread for a Jewish holiday.

    Ludicrous though it appeared, the "blood libel" found a wide audience among the well-educated as well as among the ignorant and superstitious masses who needed only a slight pretext to attack the Jews, a people declared "alien" long before. Christian mothers instructed their children about the dangers of straying too far from home, "Be good, or the Jews will get you."

    In the middle of the sixth century, a group of scholars working for the Roman Emperor Justinian issued a series of anti-Jewish rulings, known as the Justinian Code. The rulings excluded Jews from all public places, prohibited Jews from giving evidence in lawsuits in which Christians took part, and forbade Jews from reading the bible in Hebrew. In 533, marriage between a Jew and a Christian was outlawed, as was the possibility of a Jew converting to Christianity. Laws forbade Jews from holding public office, employing Christian servants, or even appearing on the streets during Holy Week, the week between Jesus' "Last Supper" and his crucifixion. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council issued a decree whereby Jews were ordered to wear special clothes and markings to distinguish themselves from Christians. In addition, Jews were not permitted to attend universities. Between 1431-43, the Council of Basel decreed that Jews in cities must live in ghettos, physically separate from Christians. The Jews could not leave the ghettos except to pursue business interests with Christians.

    In most of Europe, Jews were denied the right to own land, and, consequently, Jews did not have the opportunity to become farmers. Similarly, commerce guilds were closed to Jews and the difficulties of pursuing a profession were compounded. Jews were left with few ways to make a living.

    Jews became peddlers, buying and selling ordinary goods far and wide. They became craftsmen (cobblers, tin smithies, scribes) and developed a reputation for their "golden hands" which produced expert work.

    Jews were engaged in money-lending. The Christian religions forbade their brethren from partaking of usury, or money-lending at interest. Jews also emerged as managers of the large estates owned by non-Jewish nobles. They became tax collectors for the nobles. Inevitably, Jews were viewed as oppressors by the peasant class with whom the Jews, representing the noble man, came into contact. These hard feelings ripened over centuries. It did not matter that the overwhelming majority of Jews were as bitterly impoverished as their Gentile neighbors.

THE CRUSADES

Christian soldiers left Europe on the first crusade to win control of the Holy Land in 1096. The purpose of the crusade was to expel the Muslims from the birthplace of Christ. They were the "infidels," those who did not believe in God. Before leaving Europe, the slaughter got off to an early start against the "infidels" at home: the Jews. During an intense reign of blood-letting, from January to July 1096, twelve thousand Jews, between one third and one fourth of the Jewish population in Germany and France, were massacred by the crusaders. Entire communities were forced to choose between baptism or death.

    Jews fled to Central and Eastern Europe, where they suffered pogroms (or outbursts of violence) at the hands of Cossacks in 1648 and '49 and where they were ultimately annihilated by the Nazis beginning in 1939.

THE BLACK DEATH

    In 1348, the Black Death (or bubonic plague) spread across Europe and killed one third of the population. Predictably, the Jews were charged with poisoning wells and initiating the epidemic. It mattered little that great numbers of Jewish people also died as a result of the plague. It mattered only that an explanation was found and someone blamed. During two years of massacre, superstitious and hate-filled mobs slaughtered thousands of Jews, believing firmly that killing Jews was not only justified but in accordance with the Lord's will. The massacres resulting from the Black Death were eclipsed only centuries later when Hitler and his henchmen launched their "final solution."

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

    In the sixteenth century, the Protestant Reformation split Christianity into different branches. The violent clashes between Protestant and Catholic armies reduced much of Central Europe to ashes. The Jews, living in ghettos behind walls often guarded by Christian sentries, eluded much of the destruction. However, as in every period of tumult, the Jews, a distinct and visible minority, became the object of hatred. In 1546, Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant Reformation who initially wanted to convert the Jews to Protestantism, issued a booklet that stands as a treatise on anti-Semitism. It was titled, "Of Jews and Their Lies."
 

"First, their synagogues or churches should be set on fire...Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed...They ought be put under one roof or in a stable, like gypsies...Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer books. Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach anymore."

As Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg has written, "The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect, 'You have no right to live among us as Jews.' The secular rulers who followed had proclaimed, 'You have no right to live among us.' The German Nazis at last decreed, 'You have no right to live.'"

NATIONALISM

    In the age of nationalism, when the people of Europe began to view themselves as belonging to separate nations, the identification of Jews as "aliens" entered a new chapter. The litmus test for loyalty to the state was loyalty to Christianity. Hence, the Jews were disqualified from citizenship. They were expelled from England in 1290, France in 1306 and again in 1394, and parts of Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Jews were not allowed to live legally in England until the sixteenth century. In Russia, the tsar (emperor) banished all Jews to the so-called Pale of Settlement, the area comprising Ukraine, Byelorussia, and eastern Poland. Jews were not allowed to live legally in France until the French Revolution. The Emancipation Decree issued by Napoleon in 1791 gave full citizenship rights to the Jews of France. Where Napoleon's armies traveled in Europe, the Jews were liberated from the confines of the ghetto. By royal decrees, the Jews of Prussia and Bavaria, two provinces in the German lands, became full citizens in the early 1800's.

INDUSTRIALISM

    The 19th century was a time of vast economic change. Economic life became fiercely competitive. In the words of historian William Jenks, "The modern state was overcast with storm clouds, and it was easiest to blame the unpredictable weather upon the Jew." The Jews now came to be seen as the ones who controlled big business, the banks, the shop on the corner, the economy in general. Indeed, the Jews were at the forefront of change. Feudalism had collapsed, the inherent restrictions placed on economic activity were no more, merit alone sufficed. Change was unpleasant for many. The old way of life had its comforts, namely, predictability and a measure of security. The estate owner now had to compete with foreign products in his once closed market. Free trade was bemoaned as a "Jewish invention." The merchant had to accustom himself to the challenges of the new times.

SOCIAL DARWINISM

    In the late 19th century, the debate on the Jewish question entered a new chapter. Hitherto, the Jews had been viewed as different and unacceptable because of their religion. In 1873, with the publication of the book The Victory of Judaism over Germanism by Wilhelm Marr, the Jewish question became one of race. The Jews, it was argued, were different because of who they were, not what they thought. They were different because of birth. They were different because of blood. An "alien" people, the Jews could never be Germans. It was in this book that the term anti-Semitism first appeared. This so-called scientific basis of anti-Semitism excluded any possibility of Jews being assimilated into German culture. Once defined as such in the popular mind, a major obstacle to Jewish destruction, the common bond in humanity, was overcome.

    Social Darwinism took root. This was the belief that people of different races were in competition with one another, and only the strongest of the races would ultimately survive.
 

Treitschke, the German philosopher, noted, "The Jews are our misfortune." The expression captured the spirit of the age.

VIENNA

    One of the most rabid hot-beds of anti-Semitic agitation at the turn of the 20th century was Vienna, the imperial capital of the Habsburg dynasty that comprised much of the lands of Central and Eastern Europe, lands heavily populated with Jews, many of whom sought to immigrate to the capital. In 1885, students at the University of Vienna formed a union based on anti-Semitism, bewailing the increasing percentage of Jewish students at the University and, in general, the number of Jewish lawyers, journalists, artists, doctors, and professors. Prior to the First World War, the percentage of Jewish students at the University of Vienna reached 28%. Jewish students in medical school comprised almost 29%; in law and politics, 20%. In 1887, the Austro-Hungarian government passed a law prohibiting the migration or settlement of foreign Jews in Austria. It was based on the Chinese Exclusion Act of the United States, with the word "Jew" substituted for "Chinese."

    The young Adolf Hitler, born in the Austrian town of Braunau in 1889, spent six bitter years in Vienna living on failed dreams in a succession of rented rooms, flop houses, and one modern and comfortable mens' hostel (built, incidentally, by the Jewish philanthropist Epstein). Though he lived comfortably on an orphan's pension for some time, Hitler wrote in his autobiography, "For me this was the time of the greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever had to go through. I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and became an anti-Semite."

    The years Hitler spent in Vienna, between 1907 and 1913, represented a time of political radicalism, economic pressure, and intense anti-Semitism in the imperial capital. The mayor of Vienna, Karl Luegar, unashamedly used anti-Semitism to win votes, blaming life's problems on the Jews. Of course, Luegar had a Jewish secretary, which he explained by saying, "I decide who is a Jew." Jewish people constituted 10% of the Viennese population. Part of the Jewish population of the city was unusually successful by European standards. They spoke German perfectly, dressed in the fashion of the day, and viewed the splendor of Vienna with the pride and arrogance of the native born. They were doctors, lawyers, journalists, writers, and store owners. It was said that three of the four major bankers in Vienna were Jews, the fourth a Greek.

    Poor Jews also lived in Vienna. They were mostly Orthodox Jews from the empire's rural provinces. Dressed in black coats and black hats and with their earlocks and long beards, the so-called "ost-Juden" (or eastern Jew) became the object of intense loathing by the Christian population of Vienna (as well as by some Viennese Jews, themselves poor immigrants from the provinces but one generation before). In the popular mind, the eastern Jew was dirty in appearance, unscrupulous in business, aggressive in the market, spoke bad German, reeked of onion and garlic, and worshiped a foreign God. He was also probably a socialist or a communist, a "red" in any event, though this was a thought not quickly reconciled with the image of the observant Jew rushing to synagogue.

    A Viennese Jew named Theodor Herzl began a movement among Europe's Jews to establish a Jewish state (based on the commune) in Palestine. It was called Zionism, and offered hope to the impoverished, scorned Jewish masses that they might one day live in peace in their own land.

    In sum, the gentile population of Vienna very much feared being physically overwhelmed by a populace they viewed as foreign and repulsive: namely, the poor Jews from the provinces who came to the city in the effort to find work and survive. It was precisely this fear that so heightened the virulent anti-Semitism that was a Viennese speciality, and that would erupt on the streets of the former imperial capital when the Nazis took over in March 1938.

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