Anti-Semitism is another word that means discrimination against Jews as a racial or religious group. This term was initially coined by German agitator Wilhelm Maar in 1879 to promote the anti-Jewish campaigns in central Europe. Anti-Semitism can be seen in the history of Europe and outside of Europe as well after the Holocaust.
Traces of Anti-Semitism In Europe
When Christianity was spreading as a religion in the first centuries, Jews were the ones who continued to reject Christianity as their religion and by the 4th century, the Christians started to target Jewish as alien people. Eventually, when the churches of Christians began to dominate in the Rome Empire, the leaders started to segregate Jews and started taking their freedom. Jews were also termed as rebels against God and also as the murderers of the Lord.
Starting from the Medieval Period
When the medieval period hit, Jews were not given citizenship in Europe and there were no rights for them as well. Jews were banned from getting any posts in the government and army, they were banned from membership in guilds neither did they have any right to be any kind of professional. Most of them thought of Jews as a tolerance class but the true anti-semitic wave started when knights of the First Crusade started the violence in France and the Hold Roman Empire in the year 1096. Apart from the violence, many rituals were followed, and then all of it came back to the Jews due to Nazis like segregation of Jews and 12th century like a mandatory yellow badge for the Jews.
To Nazi antisemitism, Holocaust
Talking about the middle era, for Jewish people the middle era was not better than medieval as they were subject to lynching and occasional massacres. The assaults and deprivation of rights were always there but this Anti-Semitism got a scary momentum when “Nazi Germany” came into power under Adolf Hither from 1993 to 1945. This not only led to a movement that was happening to Jews in Germany but also promoted anti-jewish moments beyond Germany as well.
Anti-Semitism was promoted In France by the Cagoulards, in Hungary by the Arrow Cross, In England by the British Union of Fascists, and in the US by the German Amerian Bund and also by the Silver Shirts. Jew people always were treated as an outcast but the level of Anti-semitism progressed towards the racial dimension because people of Nazi Germany considered Jew people as Subhuman and as dangerous cancer that will destroy German people. Nazi Germany found the solution, murder of all the Jews; men, women, children so that the whole race will be eradicated.
Adolf Hither’s Nazi Germany thought Jew people’s elimination was essential to purify the German People. When the WAR was going on, approximately 5.7 million Jews were killed by mobile killing units in death camps placed at Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Majdanek, and Treblinka.
Nazi was defeated and after that anti-semitism lost its favoritism in the United States and western Europe. Anti-Semitism was not a thing anymore, it was a hate crime. Though at a low pace, with lesser people and very few supporters, Anti-semitism still occurred occasionally. One of the examples is Jewish Purges in Poland that happened in the year 1956-1957 and then again in 1968. The US declared antisemitism as a form of racism in the year 1998.
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Influential Jewish People
Amidst all the hate Jewish people have been given for a very long time, they have contributed fairly in politics, laws, religion, and science. Here are some names you must remember as they have contributed a lot to society and this modern world as well.
- Albert Einstein
We have been reading about him since we were kids but rarely did we read that he was Jewish. Albert Einstein was a theoretical Physicist who successfully changed the view of people on how they look at the universe. He was born in the year 1879, earned the Nobel prize in the year 1921.
- Golda Meir
She was a young school teacher in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She got involved in the Zionist Movement there only and then decide to move to Palestine. After Israel got its independence, she became the first brand ambassador to the Soviet Union. In the year 1969, Meir was a prime minister of Israel and internationally came to be known as Golda. She was close with David Ben-Gurion and more stubborn than him, she not only opposed the Palestinian state but also declined the existence of the Palestinian people.
- David-Ben-Gurion
He is known as Israel’s founding father. He led Israel’s War of Independence in the year 1948 and continued to guide the country as a Prime Minister for the next 15 years.
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