The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.
The second Klan started small in Georgia in 1915. It grew after 1920 and flourished nationwide in the early and mid-1920s, including urban areas of the Midwest and West. Rooted in local Protestant communities, it sought to maintain white supremacy, often took a pro-Prohibition stance, and it opposed Catholics and Jews.
A pogrom is a violent riot aimed at the massacre or expulsion of an ethnic or religious group, particularly one aimed at Jews. The Slavic-languages term originally entered the English language to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire.
Under the Spanish Inquisition, the Alhambra Decree, issued in January 1492, gave Jews the choice between expulsion and conversion. The Jews of the kingdom of Castile emigrated mainly to Portugal where the entire community was forcibly converted in 1497 and to North Africa. The most intense period of persecution lasted until 1530.
The first encounters between Muslims and Jews resulted in friendship when the Jews of Medina gave Muhammad refuge. Conflict arose when Muhammad expelled certain Jewish tribes after they refused to swear their allegiance to him. Of the three Jewish tribes of Medina, the Banu Nadir and the Banu Qaynuqa were expelled in the course of Muhammad's rule. The Banu Qurayza tribe was eliminated by Muhammad in the aftermath of the Battle of the Trench. The tribe was accused of colluding with Meccan enemies and besieged. When they surrendered, all grown men were executed and women and children were enslaved.
During the High Middle Ages in Europe there was full-scale persecution of Jews in many places, with blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres. An underlying source of prejudice against Jews in Europe was religious. Jews were frequently massacred and exiled from various European countries. The persecution reached its first peak during the Crusades. In the First Crusade (1096), flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed, a prime example being the Rhineland massacres. In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by expulsions, including in 1290, the banishing of all English Jews; in 1396, 100,000 Jews were expelled from France; and, in 1421 thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland.
As the Black Death epidemics devastated Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than a half of the population, Jews were taken as scapegoats. Rumors spread that they caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by violence in the Black Death persecutions. Although Pope Clement VI tried to protect them by papal bull on July 6, 1348 - with another following later in 1348 - several months afterwards, 900 Jews were burnt alive in Strasbourg, where the plague hadn't yet affected the city.
------------- There is no rational explanation other than the usual antisemitic evil for claims that Jews are privileged. All discussions of privilege are nonsense, but this particular attack is contradicted by thousands of years of history.
The proof of the pudding re actual disadvantage in the US of here and now is their standing in re median household income today. Thats the fairest and most relevant metric of all.
Unfortunately the US does not collect information by religion. But lets not kid ourselves. If Jews were broken out in the census median income survey they would be on top.
Thank you for posting that reminder that being Jewish has historically meant being hated by just about everyone.
Being a Jewish conservative is a very lonely existence. When I’m among Jews, I’m one of a very few conservatives, often the only one. When I’m among conservatives, I’m one of a very few Jews, often the only one.
My grandparents moved to York, PA in 1928 when my father was 14, after their resort in the Jewish enclave in the Catskill mountains went bankrupt as a result of a typhoid epidemic that took the life of my great grandmother and nearly took the life of my father.
The very first Saturday night in York, the regular Saturday night march of the hooded Ku Klux Klan went right past their home on the way to the regular, weekly, cross burning rally. Lest we forget, the Klan was Democrat.
Any of my relatives who remained in Eastern Europe were victims of the Holocaust. Some were murdered, including my great grandfather. Some survived and came to American or went to OUR Holy Land.
My great uncle recognized someone here in York, who had been the American GI who had opened the gate liberating the concentration camp where he had been imprisoned by the Nazis.
I once read that Bernard Baruch was faced with a choice in the 1924 Democrat convention. One Democrat presidential candidate was a corrupt New Yorker. The other was supported by the Klan. He chose the corrupt New Yorker, who then lost the general election to Republican Calvin Coolidge.
I personally faced anti-Semitism in my youth and young adult years, mostly in ignorant remarks from peers. There were organizations and country clubs from which Jews were excluded, even if we could afford to join, which we could not.
One country club was going bankrupt, so they decided to admit Jews. Several members quit in protest. When the other country club and organizations decided to admit Jews, I was invited to join. I did not, and would not, even if I could have afforded it.
In the Middle Ages, the Crusaders went to claim a Holy Land that was never theirs. They murdered every Jew that they encountered on the way. I am reminded of that every time I hear someone singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
A funny story that My uncle told me. He lived in North central New Jersey that had become a suburb on New York City. There was a country club that refused to admit Jews. So some Jews established a country club that was open to anyone of any religion. The country club that refused to admit Jews went bankrupt, and their members then applied to the Jewish club for membership.