The presence of Jews in England has been a source of controversy for many reasons. On page 35 of Pat Barker's historical novel Regeneration, Siegfried Sassoon reveals the nature of his relationship with his father, who left home when he was five, and gives an account of his Jewish history. Though he hadn't been raised Jewish and apparently had no association with his Jewish relatives, Sassoon was subjected to the discrimination that was often seen in England before and during WWI. Through Sassoon's Jewish heritage and the other characters relation to the past, Barker exposes the need of mankind to identify with the past in order to come to terms with the present.
There is much history concerning the Jewish people and their presence in England as an organized community, beginning in 1066 when Jewish merchants were encouraged to move to England. Professor Daniel J. Elazer, in summarizing an article by Aubrey Newman, states that from 1066 to 1290 the Jews suffered persecution in the form of "blood libels, mass riots, and discriminatory legislation" (4), followed by expulsion from England until 1655 when a Sephardi Rabbi was able to convince Oliver Cromwell to allow the Jews readmission. Most of the Jews coming into England were Sephardi Jews, well educated and successful businessmen from Spain and Amsterdam, until later in the seventeenth century when Jewish immigrants from Northern Europe began to arrive. These Jews were known as Ashkenazi Jews and were of a lower social class than the Sephardi (5).
Anti-Jewish sentiment in England can be attributed to more than religious persecution. It includes religious, race, and social issues and is researched in depth in Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876-1939, by Professor Colin Hol...
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...ows both Rivers and Prior to embrace the present. By denying the past, many of the characters in Barker's novel struggle with the present. Many are unable to deal with the horrors of war witnessed and experienced in their recent past. Others, such as Rivers and Prior, struggle with issues from their childhood as well. Regeneration shows that by making a connection with the past and accepting it for what it is, the characters are able to continue their lives with some sense of order and purpose.
Works Cited
Barker, Pat. Regeneration. New York: Plume, 1993.
Elazer, Daniel. "British Jewry." Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs. 14 April 2004. <http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles3/british.htm>
Holmes, Colin. Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1879-1939. London: Edward Arnold Ltd., 1979.
Westman, Karin E. Pat Barker's Regeneration. New York: Continuum, 2001.
Mark Baker’s ‘The Fiftieth Gate’ creates a struggle between memory and history as each represents the Holocaust but through different means of representation. The language of memory is partial, subjective, and emotional and experiences confusion and doubts. Baker provides the historical facts of the Aktions and slave-labour camps in historian terms, that of numbers of deaths, survivors and prisoners, and is criticised by his parents. “Fecks, fecks” Joe says dismissively and Genia describes his work as “shopping lists”. This demonstrates how Baker believed his parents’ pasts were represented through history, and Joe and Genia felt their experiences were represen...
Jews were also barred from owning land or from holding jobs that they desired and for which they qualified. Even under these constraints, Jews prospered and gained significant values as merchants throughout Europe. During the Middle Age, with the increased spread of Christianity, Jews were looked upon as “allied with Muslims” and many were killed (Carr; Shyovitz). Long before the twentieth century Holocaust, Jews were forced to live in closed communities, known as ghettos, without interacting with the outside world, but under strict regulations from the German authorities (“Ghetto”). Jewish isolation led to a greater increase of their religious background and, therefore, even greater persecution. In the seventeenth century, rulers of the European kingdoms valued the Jews because of their economic status and granted them citizenships. During the eighteenth
Anti-Semitism is the hatred and discrimination of those with a Jewish heritage. It is generally connected to the Holocaust, but the book by Helmut Walser Smith, The Butcher’s Tale shows the rise of anti-Semitism from a grassroots effect. Smith uses newspapers, court orders, and written accounts to write the history and growth of anti-Semitism in a small German town. The book focuses on how anti-Semitism was spread by fear mongering, the conflict between classes, and also the role of the government.
Beginning with the economic level of analysis, Smith points out how accusations regarding the Jews concerning the murder of Ernst Winter generally had a common trait in that several of the accusers had either “worked for the Jews they accused or had been in close business relationships with them” (Smith 2002, 139). Smith goes on to note that these accusers often came from low-class or low-middle class citizens and consisted of “unskilled workers, day laborers, masons and a civil servant, a prison guard and a night watchman, a poor farmer and his family, a handful of apprentices, and a large number of servant girls” (Smith 2002, 139). Unsurprisingly, Smith explains that the result of such noticeable differences in the possession of wealth between Konitz citizens led to poorer Christians seeking to place blame on Jews of middle-class status; thereby creating a “rudimentary form of economic or class protest” (Smith 2002, 140). However, Helmut Walser Smith is quick to indicate that this form of analysis cannot solely provide an answer to the rise of anti-Semitic sentiment in Imperial Germany. This explanation, Smith says, is rather simple; although it is true that Christians were perhaps motivated to falsely accuse their Jewish neighbors due to their social and economic trials, not all Konitz-residing Christians were disadvantaged and not all Konitz Jews
"Demonological anti-Semitism, of the virulent racial variety, was the common structure of the perpetrators' cognit...
Pat Barker's Regeneration focuses on the troubled soldiers' mental status during World War One. Barker introduces the feelings soldiers had about the war and military's involvement with the war effort. While Regeneration mainly looks at the male perspective, Barker includes a small but important female presence. While Second Lieutenant Billy Prior breaks away from Craiglockhart War Hospital for an evening, he finds women at a cafe in the Edinburgh district (Barker 86). He comes to the understanding that the women are munitions workers. Women's involvement in war work in Regeneration shows the potential growth in women's independence, but at the expense of restrictions placed on men while they were on the front lines of battle.
Jewish emancipation in Germany dates from 1867 and became law in Prussia on July 3, 1869. Despite the fact the prominence which Jews had succeeded in gaining in trade, finance, politics, and literature during the earlier decades of the century, it is from the brief rise of liberalism that one can trace the rise of the Jews in German social life. For it is with the rise of liberalism which the Jews truly flourished. They contributed to its establishment, benefited from its institutions, and were under fire when it was attacked. Liberal society provides social mobility, which led to distaste among those who had acquired some place in a sort of a hierarchy. Although many were, not all anti-Semites were anti-liberal, but most anti-Semites opposed Liberalism’s whole concept of human existence, which provides much equality.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009. Print
Wolffe, J. 1997. Religion in Victorian Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press in association with the Open University
An exploration of Jewish mixed blood status in Nazi Germany renders a brief history of anticipatory racial conceptions leading up to the Third Reich. The use of Mischlinge as well as other labels intended to denote mixed blood naturally evolved out of well-established racial conceptions central to Germany and the Third Reich ideology. This ideology, which existed as “an uneasy fusion of different strands of racial elitism and popularism,” defined persons as according to not only their Rasse or racial identity, but also membership of the German people or Volk (Hutton 15, 18). The idea of the Volk denoted not only shared language and heritage as well as right of citizenship, but the ordained right to inhabit German lands. Above all, this idea concerned triumphant unification of a German people perceived to be under threat of dissolution by ethnic and religious groups such as the R...
Miller, Connie Colwell. The Bermuda Triangle The Unsolved Mystery. Mankato, Minnesota: Capstone Press, 2009. Print.
The Bermuda Triangle is located off the South-Eastern coast of the United States and forms a triangular section in the Atlantic Ocean. Over the centuries, there were many planes and ships that suddenly vanished when sailing or flying over a specific part of the Atlantic Ocean. This place is known as the Bermuda Triangle, a mythical section of the Atlantic Ocean. There are many reasons as to why the sudden vanishing of ships and planes have been happening. Most of these reasons were theories from authors who had an idea of what was going on in the Bermuda Triangle and why they thought it was happening. Scientists are still trying to figure out why these sudden disappearances keep taking place in this section of the Atlantic Ocean.
In conclusion the bermuda triangle is an imaginary triangle with a deadly reputation. No explanation has been proven correct and the mystery is still to be solved. After countless events of paranomal activity being reported, it is difficult to believe that the triangle is a safe place with nothing peculiar about it, even though most researchers believe differently. The sense of mystery, publicized occurances of paranormal activity, and attention from scientists and researchers has continued to fuel interest on the matter.
"Bermuda Triangle Incidents of Disappearances." Bermuda Triangle Incidents of Disappearances. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013.
The Bermuda Triangle is a triangular area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Many people believed that people, ships, and planes have mysteriously vanished in this area. The size of the triangle varies from 500,000 square miles. Some trace the mystery back to the time of Columbus. Bermuda Triangle estimates range from about 200 to no more than 8,000 distress calls in the area and that there have been more than 50 ships and 20 planes to go down in the Bermuda Triangle within the last century. Many people think Bermuda Triangle is made of Evil extraterrestrial, residue crystals from Atlantis, evil humans with anti-gravity devices or other weird technologies, and vile vortices from the fourth dimension. Strange magnetic fields and oceanic flatulence are favorites among the technically minded. Weather, bad luck, pirates, explosive cargoes, incompetent navigators, and other natural and human causes are favorites among skeptical investigators. Is Bermuda Triangle fact or fiction and how people react to the Bermuda Triangle (Devil's Triangle).