The History of Antisemitism• The roots of antisemitism in Germany go

back a very long time.

• The foundation of hate the Nazis built on was formed centuries earlier.

• Jews rarely lived in peace for long as far back as the ancient Roman Empire (63 BC).

11th Century- Christian knights went on crusades to convert or kill the Moslems of the Middle East;

They found easier victims closer to home

•German Christian Crusaders massacred thousands of Jews in German towns

•Jews were called “Christ killers” in the early years of Christianity; a belief that persisted through the centuries

• Middle Ages- Jews were said to have poisoned wells causing years of the plague (“Black Death”) that killed millions in Europe

• In the years of the Plague

over 200 Jewish communities

were destroyed; thousands of

Jews were killed

Painting: The Black Plague 1349

“Blood Libel”

• During the Middle Ages, Jews were charged with the ritual murder of Christian children, and said to use their blood during religious ceremonies

• The Nazis later used this in their propaganda against the Jews

Jewish communities were raided and destroyed

Jewish children were taken from their parents and raised as Christians

Jews were burned at the stake because they refused to give up their religion

Jews were expelled from country after country

•Jews were expelled from England, France, and Spain

•Many settled in Eastern Europe, especially Poland

•Massacres and pogroms directed at the Jews took place from the 5th to the 20th centuries

Strict limits were placed on what Jews could and could not do

Jews were forbidden to be doctors, lawyers, or teachers of non-Jews

Jews were not allowed to sell food to Christians

Jews couldn’t be cared for by Christian nurses

Jews weren’t allowed to live in the same houses as non-Jews

Jews were forced to wear a special article of clothing or a cloth badge

•Jews were forced to live in separate walled areas called ghettos

•In the 1800’s signs began to appear that were the building blocks of Nazism

•Antisemitic incidents grew in number and violence

Significant Event

In 1879 Wilhem Marr used the word “antisemitism” for the first time

Marr, known as the father of modern antisemitism, based his ideas on what he called“racial” rather than

religious characteristics of Jews

This was an important change in the history of Jewish persecution

Jews began to be thought of as a race for the first time

This belief said Jews were different by birth from everyone else

This idea was the cornerstone of nazi antisemitism

Antisemitic politicians were elected to the Reichstag; Germany’s ruling body

Anti-Jewish books and pamphlets appeared

1903: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ appeared in Russia. It was

translated into German and

sold by thousands. It was supposed

to be a secret plan of a Jewish

conspiracy to take over the world

Antisemitic pograms continued intomodern times

•pogroms in Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine

•1918-1920 about 100,000 Jews murdered in western Ukraine

•1919-1921 60,000 Jews killed in pogroms in Poland and Ukraine

•1934 100 Jews killed in pogrom in Algeria

•1935 increased violence and discrimination against Jews in Poland

•1936,1938 more pogroms in Poland

November 9-10, 1938 Kristallnacht - Germany and Austria

KRISTALLNACHT

Laws and actions against the Jews increase

1927 Jewish cemeteries throughout Germany are desecrated by Nazis, synagogues in Romania destroyed

1933 first concentration camp is established: Dachau

1933 boycott of Jewish lawyers, doctors, and merchants, economic and employment sanctions against Jews increasing

1933 book burning of “non German” books (mostly Jewish)

1933 Jews banned from fields of journalism, art, literature, music, broadcasting, and theater

1935 Nuremberg Laws: deprived Jews of

citizenship, took away voting and other rights

1933-1939 more than 1400 anti-Jewish laws are passed in Germany