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Jewish discrimination in 1900s Germany
Jewish discrimination in 1900s Germany
Antisemitism in the west
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In the article “Before the "Final Solution": Toward a Comparative Analysis of Political Anti-Semitism in Interwar Germany and Poland," William Hagen attempts to educate readers on a bigger issue regarding the Holocaust. He explains how central and eastern European Jews faced threats before anti-Semitism spread in Germany. In fact, there was a decades long process that led to the rejection of Jews according to documents and historical literature. Due to the Jew’s social and political integration being vulnerable to attack, the interest of modernizing Christian middle-class elements in the industrial-capitalist order became possible. Hagen, overall, unravels the cause of anti-Semitism in central and eastern Europe.
Moreover, Hagen states
According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, anti-Semitism is hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group. There are two main types of anti-Semitism: classical anti-Semitism and modern anti-Semitism. Classical anti-Semitism is the hatred and intolerance towards Jews because of their religious differences. According to remember.org,
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.
When a young boy is found brutally murdered in a small Prussian town called Konitz, once part of Germany, now part of Poland, the Christians residing in the town lash out by inciting riots and demonstrations. Citing the incident as an act of Jewish ritual murder, better known as blood libel, Christians rendered blame on the Jews. Helmut Walser’s Smith, The Butcher’s Tale, details the murder account and the malicious consequences of superstitious belief combined with slander and exaggerated press propaganda. Foreshadowing the persecution of Jews which would take place three decades later, Smith analyzes and explains the cause and effect of anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany at the turn of the century. Utilizing Smith’s book as a primary source,
The account of Jedwabne is unique in the fact that it focuses on one mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jewish residents, which occurred in July 1941. The murder occurs during the violent German campaign of anti-Semitism in Poland. The main occurrence seen across Germany and Poland of the anti-Semitism campaign was the killing and justified harassment of Jewish residents. Without a doubt the event in Jedwabne was triggered by Nazi influence. What is interesting is how Gross represents these influences. He shows that the killings of Jedwabne were planned, organized, and enthusiastically conducted by local authorities and citizens of the non-Jewish community. Gross also points out that it is possible that Germans did not participate in this killing and that it is even possib...
“All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach,” Adolf Hitler (The National World War Museum). The German Nazi dictator utilized his power over the people using propaganda, eventually creating a sense of hatred towards Jews. After World War 1, the punishments of the League of Nations caused Germany to suffer. The Nazi party came to blame the Jews in order to have a nation-wide “scapegoat”. This hatred and prejudice towards Jews is known as anti-semitism. According to the Breman Museum, “the Nazi Party was one of the first political movements to take full advantage of mass communications technologies: radio, recorded sound, film, and the printed word” (The Breman Museum). By publishing books, releasing movies and holding campaigns against Jews, antisemitism came to grow quickly, spreading all across Germany. The Nazi Party often referred to the notion of a “People’s Community” where all of Germany was “racially pure” (Issuu). They would show images of ‘pure’, blond workers, labouring to build a new society. This appealed greatly to people who were demoralized during Germany’s defeat in World War 1 and the economic depression of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Hitler, along with Joseph Goebbels, used developed propaganda methods in order to suppress the Jews and spread anti semitism.
Goldhagen's book however, has the merit of opening up a new perspective on ways of viewing the Holocaust, and it is the first to raise crucial questions about the extent to which eliminationist anti-Semitism was present among the German population as a whole. Using extensive testimonies from the perpetrators themselves, it offers a chilling insight into the mental and cognitive structures of hundreds of Germans directly involved in the killing operations. Anti-Semitism plays a primary factor in the argument from Goldhagen, as it is within his belief that anti-Semitism "more or less governed the ideational life of civil society" in pre-Nazi Germany . Goldhagen stated that a
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.
As the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh states, even before the Holocaust, Jewish people had to flee Germany due to discrimination and anti-Semitism. They most of the time emigrated to Palestine, England, and the United States. Small numbers of Jews also immigrated to countries in South America. The number of Jews that immigrated took an even larger jump when Hitler took leadership in 1933, especially when he introduced the Nuremberg Laws, which began to actively restrict Jews in Germany (“Jewish Life during the Holocaust”). In the end we see that anti-Semitism, Germany’s loss of World War I and its economic decline, and a racial struggle between Aryans and Jews caused the Jews to be singled out for extermination.
Many religious conflicts are built from bigotry; however, only few will forever have an imprint on the world’s history. While some may leave a smear on the world’s past, some – like the homicide of Semitic people – may leave a scar. The Holocaust, closely tied to World War II, was a devastating and systematic persecution of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime and allies. Hitler, an anti-Semitic leader of the Nazis, believed that the Jewish race made the Aryan race impure. The Nazis did all in their power to annihilate the followers of Judaism, while the Jews attempted to rebel, rioted against the government, and united as one. Furthermore, the genocide had many social science factors that caused the opposition between the Jews and Nazis. Both the German economy and the Nuremberg Laws stimulated the Holocaust; nevertheless, a majority of the Nazis’ and Hitler’s actions towards Jews were because of the victims’ ethnicity.
Tent, James F. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans. Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Norton, James. The Holocaust: Jews, Germany, and the National Socialists. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc., 2009. Print.
Political parties that supported anti-Semitism prior to about 1914, rarely won, but anti-Jewish attitudes became fairly commonplace in many European countries. From what I...
The history of the Jewish people is one fraught with discrimination and persecution. No atrocity the Nazis did to the Jews in the Holocaust was original. In England in 1189, a bloody massacre of the Jews occurred for seemingly no reason. Later, the Fourth Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III required Jews to wear a badge so that all would know their race, and then had them put into walled, locked ghettos, where the Jewish community primarily remained until the middle of the eighteenth century. When the Black Death ravaged Europe in the medieval ages, many Europeans blamed the Jews (Taft 7). Yet, the one thing that could be more appalling than such brutal persecution could only be others’ failure and flat-out refusal to intervene. Such is the case with the non-Axis coutries of World War II; these nations failed miserably in their responsibility to grant basic human rights – even the right of life – to Jewish immigrants prior to World War II.
When discussing a religion that is as vast and ancient as Judaism, it is hard to pick just one aspect that is especially interesting. After searching through many articles about the religion, there was one thing that constantly caught my attention; the hatred of Jews by so many people. Christians, Muslims, and other people of different beliefs have shown there hate for the Jewish religion over thousands of years.
Anti-Semitism, a hatred of Jews, has been present for centuries in many places. However, the term ‘Anti-Semitism’ itself only came into use in the nineteenth century, and along with it came an ideology which fuelled this deep psychological hatred to develop into a political movement which culminated in Nazism. Throughout history, the reasons for Anti-Semitism have differed and in Imperial Germany, it was a combination of religious, racial and political factors which led to such hostility toward Jews. However, the economic state of the nation is often thought to be the main reason behind the way in which Jews were treated during this period.