Hitler's Hatred Towards Jews example essay topic

The most familiar act of anti-Semitism is the Holocaust, but anti-Semitism goes further back. The Holocaust began with the ideas of anti-Semitism, stereotypes, sinister cartoons, and the gradual spread of hate. Anti-Semitism is the prejudice and discrimination against or harassment of Jewish people. Martin Luther once wrote, "That next to the devil thou hast no enemy more cruel, more venomous and violent than a true Jew" (Dawidowicz, 23). Anti-Semitism is just like every other type of prejudice and discrimination, it represents a denial of human rights. Though violent Anti-Semitism acts are rare, there are still occurrences of anti-Semitism today.

The roots of anti-Semitism were believed to be started in Ancient Israel. When Ancient Israel was invaded and destroyed, rulers blamed the Jews for the disaster. "The Jews had turned to another God and neglected their own ancient laws and Gods, therefore the Gods punished Israel" (Patterson 3). The Jews were then forced to leave Israel. After leaving Ancient Israel, many Jews arrived in Ancient Greece and Rome. "It was in Alexandria where the first anti-Jewish acts were recorded" (Patterson 5).

There they had limits to social and commercial life. "The Syrian emperor Antiochus Epiphanies IV (175-163 BC) even tried to stop them from practicing their religion" (Patterson 4). They were forced to worship Zeus, but revolted. This gave the Jews political independence and granted them certain rights. This only led to more tensions within the city. Greek writers attacked Jews and wrote they were slaves in Egypt and expelled because they were lepers.

"In certain places Jews were tolerated but forced to wear certain clothing or identification, restricted to certain quarters, and required to pay special taxes" (Patai 74). A pion who was Alexandria's most prominent anti-Semitic writer, held Jews accountable with every 1 offense imaginable. "He accused them of hating people, being traitors, ridiculed their beliefs, killing human beings and kidnapping" (Patterson 5). Jews were said to have rituals celebrating their murders and kidnapping's. With the new faith, Christianity, and the failure to convert Jews, the Catholic Church charged Jews with the crucifixion of Jesus. Roman Emperors sent officials to rule Judea directly and convert the Jews to Christianity.

Tension exploded and in A.D. 66. A bloody war between the Jews and Romans would take place for four years. Christians began to bring a negative picture of Judaism in their writings. John Chrysostom, 'Doctor of the Church', criticized and attacked Jews of his city. He called them; 'lustful, rapacious, greed, perfidious bandits... inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed by the devil' (Patterson, 9). Jews questioned if the Christians forgotten Jesus was a Jew?

As the Medieval and Middle Ages approached Anti-Semitism did not end. Jews were denied citizenship and civil rights. The Crusades were a massive murder for the Jews. They were fighting over the Holy Land. "As many as ten thousand were killed, one third of the Jewish population in Germany" (Patterson, 12).

This only led to the resentment of Jews and more alarm. They were denied positions of authority in government and military, membership in guilds and professions, and from owning any land. After time they were cloistered to ghettos and had to wear hats or badges for identification purposes. Government restricted Jews to certain jobs as well. "Popular lore came to depict the Jew as having horns and a tail, like the devil, and a distinctive smell" (Patai 74). "When the Black Death (1347-1350) occurred Jews were accused for poisoning wells and food supplies" (Pati a 75).

This would put Jews at the lowest group in society and become harassed for every misfortune. 2 During the Enlightenment period, the Jews were given a new freedom. While many philosophers argued that Jews and Christians were equal and deserved equal rights, there were the few who disagreed. Voltaire was one who detested the Jews.

He wrote that Jews were the "enemies of mankind" and claimed they were "most obtuse, cruel and absurd" (Patterson, 18). Voltaire gave others the idea that Jews were the sworn enemy. Emancipation followed the Enlightenment era. Emancipation abolished special taxes on Jews and permitted them to leave their ghettos. This angered many. They feared Jews would take over and punish them, as they had done to them.

Due to the Emancipation act, nationalism and anti-Semitism ideas were spreading quickly. One German philosopher, Johann Fichte, was very upset with Emancipation. He wrote "The only way I could imagine giving Jews their rights would be, to cut off all their heads in one night, and to set new ones on their shoulders, which should contain not a single Jewish idea" (Patterson, 28). With this anti-Semitism grew and spread.

With the anti-Semitism rising in Germany, it spread to near by countries such as Austria-Hungary, France, and Russia. Russia refused to allow any Jews from entering central Russia. With the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, a darkened period arose for the Jews. "Alexander saw Jews as instigators of radical and liberal movements" (Patterson 39). It was Alexander who came up with the ideas of pogroms. A pogrom was an organized assault on Jewish communities.

He would convert one third of the Jews to Christianity, one-third emigration and one third starvation. The first pogrom took place on Easter 1881, with hundreds of villages burned and Jews murdered, maimed and robbed. The most notable pogroms were in Kishinev Russia. "This 3 involved 600 villages and cities and resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Jews and the looting destruction of their property" ( web). With many of the uprisings of anti-Semitism in Europe, many Jews emigrated to the United States. With all that had come about in the past years, Europe was raging with nationalism and hatred.

Cf. Peter Gay, a Jewish reporter wrote, "It was a world intoxicated with hate, drive by a paranoia enemies everywhere, the Jew lurking behind each one" (Dawidowicz, 47). In the year of 1914, Europe became involved with World War I. As a result, in 1918 when the war ended, the Central Powers had been defeated. "The most obvious causes of the Holocaust were German anti-Semitism, nationalism, Hitler, the Nazis, economic problems, and the humiliations and resentment felt by the recently defeated German people" (Patterson 55).

German military began to blame Jews for the lose, since over three-quarters of them were fighting at the front. The first Nazi group was formed in 1920 by Adolf Hitler, after the 120,000 copies were sold of Protocols of the Elders of Zion. "In 1905, the Russian secret police forged and published, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It purported to be a secret Jewish plan for worldwide domination" (Patai, 75). Anti-Semitic propaganda was unrelenting. Children's books, newspapers, election posters, and magazines were filled with anti-Semitic thoughts.

"One of the most popular children's book was, Tray k einem Fuchs auf greener Heid und k einem Jud be in's einem Eid, (Trust No Fox in the Green Meadow and No Jew on his Oath) " (Zeldman, 2). "Some posters mocked the way a typical Jew would look like" (D work & Jan van Pelt, 34). Propaganda began to influence Germans to hate Jews. Hate toward the Jews flourished through Germany. "The little people- the farmers peasants and small shopkeepers- were jealous at the success and prosperity of the assimilated 4 Jews and caused racist ideas of anti-Semitism to only grow worst" (Patterson, 58). Integration of Jews into German life increased too, only increasing racist ideas.

German people began to fear the Jews. On January 30th, 1933, Adolf Hitler, sworn under oath, entered the German office. Hitler swore "I will employ... to protect the constitution and laws of the German people... and conduct my affairs of office impartially and with justice to everyone". When Hitler uttered these words, he had already planned to destroy the constitution and the laws he was swearing to protect. Hitler wouldn't consider justice, he would persecute the enemies-democracy, freedom, parliament, political pluralism, and above all, the Jews, everything he hated. (Dawidowicz, 48).

With Hitler in the German office, there was a new fear for the Jews. Hitler's hatred towards Jews increased and spread. He saw Jews responsible for all literary filth, artistic trash, and theatrical idiocy. Behind all the big liberal newspapers, was a Jew, they were all Jews. Hitler concluded Jews were dangerous foreign people, trying to seduce the German people. He believed Jews were held too high in office.

Nearly every clerk was a Jew. With his growing hate, Hitler wrote; "No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation" (Patterson, 58-62). Hitler believed in one race, the perfect race, which excluded Jews. Hitler and Heinrich had taken away all Jews rights. "Heinrich wrote, Jews are not admitted to serve in the army or navy.

Jews do not have an active nor a passive vote. Jews are no longer allowed to work for German newspapers. Banks are not permitted to have any Jewish workers. Jews are to own no property.

Jews are aliens and must pay double the taxes that Germans pay" (Dawidowicz, 57). With the creation of Nazi parties, swastika, connoting Aryan supremacy, and anti-Semitics beliefs, Nazi leaders came to a conclusion, The Final Solution. 5 This would rid Germany and Europe of its "Jewish problem". In 1939, the plan to exterminate the enemy (the Jew) was definite. Hitler told the Czech Foreign Minister Chvalkov-sky; "We are going to destroy the Jews" (Dawidowicz 105). Hitler also filled Nazi solider's head with the words; "The Jew is a parasite.

Wherever he flourishes, the people die... Elimination of the Jew from our community is to be regarded as an emergency defense measure" (Dawidowicz, 70). Nazi solider's poured into Poland. The slogan painted on the side of some trains was, "Were going to Poland to beat up some Jews" (Patterson, 81). Nazi soldiers went into Poland, with expectations of riding all Jews. Jews were first forced into gated ghettos.

"The first ghetto was the Warsaw ghetto in Lodz, Poland, which soon had a population of five hundred thousand Jews" (Patterson, 83). In ghettos the food was rationed, they had to pay taxes and share public kitchens. In 1941, after two years of keeping Jews in ghettos, the Nazi's true intentions were beginning to happen. While many died from disease, exhaustion and starvation, the Nazis had planned a more direct means to murder the Jews. An eyewitness, Riva Yosselevscha, wrote; "They were to take their clothes off, then shot...

Around me lied so many bodies, dying and suffering, naked and shot, but not all were dead" (Patterson, 90-1). In 1942 gas trucks were invented. Jews were put in the trucks and were mass murdered. In the summer of 1942, death camps were set up. They were slave labor camps.

Jews were given little food, specific clothing, and stripped of their lives. They had large rooms for shootings and a camp routine so brutal that hundreds of prisoners died every day. Along with shootings, medical experiments were carried out. Jews were tortured and tested with new diseases, temperature effects, drugs, and cutting out organs or bones. (Patterson, 100-1). 6 In 1944, US troops and allies got involved.

This gave a new hope to Jews. Jews were set free and concentration camps were shut down. "It was by far the most infamous manifestation of anti-Semitism with some six million Jews murdered" (Patai, 75). "Before Hitler's death he let his last bit of hatred out.

He blamed the war on international Jewry and urged future leaders to uphold the racial laws" (Patterson, 102). The Holocaust had finally ended with millions of slaughtered Jews. Many Jews emigrated to the United States after World War II. Despite the publicized outburst of black anti-Semitism, American Jews had never been more affluent, more secure and more at home. The only new concern in America was, did the Jews have too much power? Anti-Semitism still existed in America.

One women, Ms. Schott, an American citizen stated; "Hitler was good in the beginning, but he went too far" (Dinnerstein 230). In the 1930's and 1940's, The Christian Century, had tried to convert Jews to Christianity. "In 1990 a poll of high school scholars concluded, they believed Jews were the Christ killers" (Dinnerstein, 231). Although Americans were not as racist as Nazis, there were the few synagogues and Jewish stores burned or robbed. All around the world there are acts of hate crimes towards the Jews. Last week in Toronto, as Jew was stabbed to death outside a kosher pizza shop.

On July 4th there was a shooting into a crow of Jews at Los Angeles International Airport by a Muslim who hated Jews. For the past years the Arab government has been becoming increasingly dominated by Jew Hatred. Arabs are accusing the Jews to have deliberately infected Israel with AIDS. (Ha levi A 16). Today the most common anti-Semitic act is the Holocaust denial. Chaz i Hamad a 7 editor-in-chief of Al Risa la, a newspaper that supports Palestinian Islamic groups, believes the Holocaust happened, but thinks different.

"I don't believe it was six million. Maybe 100,000. Maybe 10,000". Hamad initially denied anti-Semitism, but said that Jews can't live in peace.

"They hate everyone who is not a Jew; they use sex and money to control the world". He questioned if God loved the Jews, smiled and replied "I don't think so". (McAllester, A 15). Today it's not Nazism that threatens Jews but the Arabs and Muslim terrorism.

Orthodox feminist Blu Green burg stated; "Anti-Semitism is being spread through schools who teach Islam" (Horowitz, 33). There a fights among Israel and other countries, over land and religion. "The World Council of Churches asked it's 342 members to consider divestment from companies that profit Israel. American Jewish groups have called it bias" (Eisenberg, A 3).

Although, Israeli Jews have blamed other countries, they have been accused of suicide bombing in Syria and Palestine. Today in United States Jews have been denied membership in private clubs, or the rights to purchase homes in certain areas. Anne Roi phe wrote"; In America there are so many kinds of, prejudices and dislikes" (Chanes, 447). Jews have also been denied of jobs, quota systems, and limiting them from admissions to colleges and universities. The Most notable anti-Semitism act was the Holocaust, but anti-Semitism goes further back. Today anti-Semitism still exist.

Robert Wist rich stated "I don't think the sort of psychosis which existed in Europe that saw the Jews as if they belong to a different species, I don't think that is the norm among Arabs. But the danger is that you don't need a majority of people to feel that way now" (McAllester, A 15). The Jews were condemned for being too intelligent of too industrious and for being capitalist, socialists, communists and even atheists. David Harris 8 concluded; "We have to make people understand that anti-Semitism is not a uniquely Jewish problem...

It's a cancer which left unchecked infects and ultimately kills democratic societies" (Horowitz, 33). Many suppose anti-Semitism unlikely to disappear". A dream, an illusion it was for us to believe that anti-Semitism would disappear" ~ Theodor Herzl, 1898 (Chanes, 121).