Anti-Semitism

The word antisemitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust, the statesponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators
between 1933 and 1945, is historys most extreme example of antisemitism.

In 1879, German journalist Wilhelm Marr originated the term antisemitism, denoting the hatred
of Jews, and also hatred of various liberal, cosmopolitan, and international political trends of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often associated with Jews. The trends under attack included
equal civil rights, constitutional democracy, free trade, socialism, finance capitalism, and
pacifism.
The specific hatred of Jews, however, preceded the modern era and the coining of the
term antisemitism. Among the most common manifestations of antisemitism throughout history
were pogroms, violent riots launched against Jews and frequently encouraged by government
authorities. Pogroms were often incited by blood libelsfalse rumors that Jews used the blood
of Christian children for ritual purposes.

In the modern era, antisemites added a political dimension to their ideology of hatred. In the last
third of the nineteenth century, antisemitic political parties were formed in Germany, France, and
Austria. Publications such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion generated or provided support
for fraudulent theories of an international Jewish conspiracy. A potent component of political
antisemitism was nationalism, whose adherents often falsely denounced Jews as disloyal
citizens.
The nineteenth century xenophobic "voelkisch movement" (folk or peoples movement)made
up of German philosophers, scholars, and artists who viewed the Jewish spirit as alien to
Germandomshaped a notion of the Jew as "non-German." Theorists of racial anthropology
provided pseudoscientific backing for this idea. The Nazi party, founded in 1919 and led by
Adolf Hitler, gave political expression to theories of racism. In part, the Nazi party gained
popularity by disseminating anti-Jewish propaganda. Millions bought Hitler's book Mein
Kampf (My Struggle), which called for the removal of Jews from Germany.

With the Nazi rise to power in 1933, the party ordered anti-Jewish economic boycotts,
staged book burnings, and enacted discriminatory anti-Jewish legislation. In 1935, the
Nuremberg Laws racially defined Jews by blood and ordered the total separation of so-called
"Aryans" and "non-Aryans, thereby legalizing a racist hierarchy. On the night of November 9,
1938, the Nazis destroyed synagogues and the shop windows of Jewish-owned stores throughout
Germany and Austria (an event now known as the Kristallnacht pogrom or Night of Broken
Glass). This event marked a transition to an era of destruction, in which genocide would become
the singular focus of Nazi antisemitism.

ANTISEMITISM IN HISTORY: NAZI ANTISEMITISM

Within the context of the economic depression of the 1930s and using not only racist but also
older social, economic, and religious imagery, the Nazi party gained popularity and, after seizing
power, legitimacy, in part by presenting "Jews" as the source for a variety of political, social,
economic, and ethical problems facing the German people.
Inspired by Adolf Hitler's theories of racial struggle and the "intent" of the Jews to survive and
expand at the expense of Germans, the Nazis, as a governing party from 1933-1938,
ordered anti-Jewish boycotts, staged book burnings, and enacted anti-Jewish legislation. In 1935,
the Nuremberg Laws defined Jews by race and mandated the total separation of "Aryans" and
"non-Aryans." On November 9, 1938, the Nazis destroyed synagogues and the shop windows of
Jewish-owned stores throughout Germany and Austria (Kristallnacht). These measures aimed at
both legal and social segregation of Jews from Germans and Austrians.
Kristallnacht, the initiation of World War II in 1939, and the invasion of the Soviet Union in
1941 marked the transition to the era of destruction, in which genocide would become the key
focus of Nazi antisemitism. To justify the murder of the Jews both to the perpetrators and to
bystanders in Germany and Europe, the Nazis used not only racist arguments but also arguments

derived from older negative stereotypes, including Jews as communist subversives, as war
profiteers and hoarders, and as a danger to internal security because of their inherent disloyalty
and opposition to Germany.