Causes • Medieval distrust. • Judaism identified with an obsolete way of life. • Promise of wealth, equality – Many people suffer under capitalist dream. – Judaism identified with ill-gotten gains. National states Global economy • Fear of loss of control over one’s destiny • Jews and “Jewish banking conspiracy” a ready made scapegoat. • Fears Jews are “taking over the world” “Victory of Judaism over Germanism” Wilhelm Marr, 1870’s • We have become so Judaised that we are outside salvation and a brutal anti-Semitic outburst will merely postpone the collapse of our Judaised society. It will not prevent it. The great mission of Judaisation is unstoppable… The twilight of the gods has begun. You are the masters and we are the slaves. It is the end of Germany. Otto Glagau, in Die Gartenlaube (late 19th century, Germany). • Members of the Jewish tribe do not work. They exploit the mental and manual work of others. This alien tribe has enslaved the people of Germany. Basically the social question is the Jewish question. Everything else is fraud. “Alfred Dreyfus Affair” • 1894: France • Accused of treason – Anti-Semitic violence • Exonerated 1906: evidence falsified Dreyfus • If he had been a Catholic or a free-thinker, he would have been classified as an isolated extraordinary case … The next day the public would have been interested in other matters… However, now everybody in France is speaking of only one man and his treason and that because that man is a Jew. • (E. Bucheron, in Le Figaro, 1894) Protocols of the Elders of Zion • When the time comes for our Ruler of the World to be crowned, we will see to it by the same means - that is to say, by making use of the mob - we will destroy everything that may prove an obstacle in our way … We have set at variance with one another all personal and national interests of the gentiles by promulgating religious and tribal prejudices among them for nearly twenty centuries… We are too powerful - the world has to reckon with us. Governments cannot make even a small treaty without our being eagerly involved in it. Pogrom “RIOT” • Russia adopts severe restrictions on Jews • Violence breaks out all over east Europe Kishinev Pogrom 1903 (49 dead) • Brothers, in the name of Our Lord who shed his blood for us and in the name of our holy Czar who is filled with compassion for his people, let us cry out during our great holiday, “Down with the Yids!” Down with these horrible vermin, these vampires slavering for the blood of Russians. (pamphet) Russian revolution, 1917 • Many Jews become communists • Thousands migrate • Russian Revolution rejected Judaism: • Communism was atheistic. A. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925-27 • At the start of the war, or even during the course of it, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced submit to poison gas, just as hundreds of thousands of our best German workers from every social stratum and from every trade and calling had to face it in the field, then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain. Holocaust “Burnt Offering” • Yad Vashem “Holocaust museum” • http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/ Stages in Nazi Anti-Jewish Policy • Pre-WW1: E.g., ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ Forged document purporting to reveal a ‘Jewish conspiracy’. • Post W W 1: ‘Mein Kampf’ Hitler’s manifesto (1925, 1927). 1933-1939 Pre-W W 2 • ‘Third Reich’: Hitler forms Government. Laws establish who is a Jew The "Aryanization" of Businesses "The Night of Broken Glass" (Nov. 1938, reprisals) 1939-45 • WW2 The Occupation of Poland (2 million Jews) Invasion of the USSR (1941) • Einsatzgruppen (action squads) massacres • The "Final Solution" (deportations to camps) • Failed Warsaw Uprising (1943) Death Camps • Sobibor: Belzek: Treblinka: Auschwitz 250,000 600,000 + 700,000 + 1,000,000 Rev. M. Niemöller German Confessing Church (7 years in a camp) • First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. • Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. • Then they came for the labor leaders, and I did not speak out because I was not a labor leader. • Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. • Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me. Jewish population 1939 1948 • • • • • • World millions E. Europe (exc. USSR) European USSR Western Europe America + Australia Palestine/Israel • Encyclopedia Judaica and J. Lestschinsky, Crisis, Catastrophe and Survival 16.6 4.7 2.8 2.0 5.5 0.4 11.5 0.8 1.8 1.1 5.8 0.6 E. Fackenheim • Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories. They are commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish. They are commanded to remember the victims the victims of Auschwitz lest their memories perish. They are forbidden to despair of man and his world, and to escape into either cynicism or other worldliness, lest they cooperate in delivering the world over to the forces of Auschwitz. Finally they are forbidden to despair of the God of Judaism, lest Judaism perish… In ancient times, the unthinkable Jewish sin was idolatry. Today it is to respond to Hitler by doing his work. • (,God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections) CANADA • Protocols of the Elders of Zion promoted by some religious leaders • 1910 - 1940s, Henri Bourassa, and Mackenzie King associated with antiSemitism • Russian pogroms justified: • Hitler praised, • Jews refused sanctuary.