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Anti-Semitism got its roots hundreds of years ago, and long before Adolf Hitler first rose to power in Germany.
Cantor Steven Pearlston of the Free Synagogue of Flushing, who also teaches Jewish history, said that it started with the pagans. During these times, Jews were called atheists because they would not worship a god other than their own. They had their own dietary guidelines and lived in their own neighborhoods. There was also an element of jealousy. These factors all influenced anti-Semitic feelings.
Bonnie Gurewitsch, the curator and archivist at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, said that as the Catholic Church gained dominance during the Middle Ages anti-Semitism also grew.
“The Nazis did not invent anti-Semitism,” she said. “It was always present.”
The Jewish people did not receive legal standing until they were emancipated by Napoleon following the French Revolution. However, during the 1800s the Jews would lose emancipation and regain it several times.
The term anti-Semitism itself was coined by German journalist Wilhelm Marr in 1879. He also founded the League of Anti-Semites.
Throughout the 19th century, Pearlston explained that resentment towards the Jews continued to rise. In part, this was because Jews had started to move up in society when they had won rights. Jewish people were becoming prominent in various areas, such as culture, the media and banking, among others.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s (USHMM) website, one of the earliest pogroms against the Jewish people was in 1821 and took place in Odessa. As time went on, the amount taking place increased.
When the “May Laws” of 1882 forced Jews to leave their towns and move into cities, many started to become involved in the socialist movement. During the communist revolution in Bavaria in 1919, there were many Jews who were prominent in this activity. Soon the term “Judeobolshevism” was created as anti-Bolshevism merged with anti-Semitism.
There was a growing fear that the Jews and Bolsheviks were trying to take over the world.
A document called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” further tried to convince the world that an attempt to take over the world by the Jews was not a myth but a reality. The document became known in areas such as Germany in the 1920s. USHMM states that “its intent was to portray Jews as conspirators against the state.”
When Hitler came to power, one of the first things he began attacking was Jewish domination, known as “Judenherrschaft.” However, before he took office, he was already expressing anti-Semitic attitudes. While delivering a speech for the German Workers’ Party on February 24, 1920, he spoke about disallowing Jews to be in office, work for the press or even maintain German citizenship, author William L. Shirer explains in “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”
Throughout history, stereotypes and myths about the Jewish people persisted. There was also continued prejudice and discrimination.
“It’s very difficult to erase centuries of anti-Semitic attitudes,” Gurewitsch said.
Ellen Alexander was born in 1929 in Berlin. She said that although she lived a good life with her family, she still experienced anti-Semitism.
“There were things that happened even in the years before I left Germany, which at the age of 10, bothered us, but obviously not as much as my parents,” she said. “Children would come up to us and say ‘you dirty Jew’ and we couldn’t play with the children in the neighborhood any more.”
As the war drew closer and tensions continued to increase, anti-Semitism became even more evident to the Jews.
