Antisemitism In The Holocaust

Anti Semitism “I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and scared. And when you're desperate and scared you scapegoat people. It exacerbates latent tendencies toward - well, toward racism or homophobia or anti-Semitism.” (Henry Louis Gates). Anti semitism is sometimes referred to as "the longest hatred," because it has been going on for over two thousand years. The racial antisemitism of the Nazis took it to a whole new level, killing over six million Jews in the holocaust. (Antisemitism in History np) That hatred that the Nazis and many others had towards the Jews was a hatred that had been growing for thousands of years. Just because of their religion, Jews were often kicked out of the
In the year 70 A.D, the Romans kicked the Jews out of their homeland, Palestine. They then had to move to nearby countries, such as Spain, North Africa, and Eastern and Western Europe. (History of Anti Semitism np) In Europe, they were treated as outsiders, especially after the rise of Christianity. The time the Jews spent living outside of Palestine is called the Diaspora. (Jewish Expulsions np) In 1012 A.D, Henry II of Germany expelled all of the Jews from the city of Mainz, which is considered the first European expulsion to happen during the Middle Ages. After that, many of the Jews settled in Poland and Lithuania because there were no oppressive lords or harsh policies in those places. Also, Polan had issued a set of edicts that guaranteed Jewish rights and legal protection. In the age of nationalism in Europe, in order to be loyal to the state, you had to be loyal to Christianity. Because of this, the Jews were denied citizenship. They were expelled from England in 1290, and from France in 1306 and in 1394.They were expelled from parts of Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Along with constantly being kicked out of where they lived, they were put under constant discrimination and were constantly being blamed for things that they didn't
In Norwich, England, in about 1140, the "blood libel" against the Jewish people was originated. A priest charged a Jewish man with killing a Christian child, saying that he "bought a Christian child before Easter, tortured him with all the tortures wherewith our Lord was tortured and on Friday hanged him on a rood in hatred of our Lord." They accused him of using the child's blood for the matzo bread for a Jewish holiday. Almost everyone at the time believed this because they believed that the Jewish people were blood-thirsty and hated all people, especially Christians. In 1348, the Black Death spread across Europe, killing one third of the population. The Jews were accused of poisoning wells and causing the epidemic so that they could kill Christians. It didn't matter to people that great numbers of Jewish people also were killed by the plague, they just needed to have someone to blame. Thousands of Jews were slaughtered for this false accusation. They were also blamed for the death of Jesus, because the Christians believed that the Jews wanted him dead because they didn't believe that he was the son of God. For centuries, the Church taught that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus' death, when in reality, the Roman government was responsible. Jesus was killed because the Roman officials believed that he was a political threat, but the Church refused to