Modern antisemitism

• Oh, great pancakes, better than Mom's! • Ha,ha, yeah. She is not a great cook. • Was your mother a good cook? • That, I don’t know. I was only 7 when she died. And where we were living we couldn't cook. • You didn’t have a kitchen? • No, ha… We had no kitchen. We had hardly any food at all.

My mother used to save some of her food and give it to me in the evenings. • Was this in ...that camp? • Yes. I told you it didn't get any better for us Jews, quite the opposite. By the end of the 18th century, it was better for the Jews at least in Western Europe. But hostility to Jews continued in many other places, especially in Eastern Europe. Many Jews had fled there during earlier persecutions.

Towards the end of the 19th century, a new idea sprang up in Europe. An idea that people who speak the same language and have the same culture should stick together, and they should all live together in one country: a nation. This idea is called nationalism. But the idea that certain people belong together also implies that others do not belong. The nationalists believed that the Jews didn’t belong.

Modern antisemitism took shape. The Jews were described as a foreign ethnic group, which didn’t belong in the nations of Europe. A false idea spread, that you could divide people into different ‘races’. According to that idea, Jews were a different, and inferior, race than a white, ‘Aryan’ race. This racist idea is completely false.

It has been proven scientifically that all people belong to the same race. But false rumors have always been a part of antisemitism. Another false rumor claimed that the Jews were trying to exterminate the Aryans. In Russia especially, it was claimed that there was a secret Jewish plan - a conspiracy - for the Jews to take over the world. Modern antisemitism grew strongly in the early 1900s.

Nationalism, conflicts, economic crises, and the First World War created a turbulent world. These in turn led to political extremism and conspiracy theories against Jews. Many of society’s problems were blamed on the Jews. Once again, just as in the Middle Ages, they got the blame for things and events they had nothing to do with. In the 1930’s, the Nazi Party grew rapidly in Germany.

The Party leader - Adolf Hitler saw it as his and the party's task to rid the country of Jews. When the Nazis seized power in 1933, direct terrorism began against Germany’s Jews. Jewish books were burned, and Jewish shops and companies were marked with a star of David. The Nazi state subjected German Jews to organized persecution. In 1935, laws were passed that robbed the Jews of their civil rights.

Marriage between Jews and Christian Germans was prohibited. On November the 9th, 1938, hundreds of Jewish synagogues and shops were destroyed. That event became known as the Crystal Night. The state seized all property owned by Jews. The Second World War broke out in 1939, and even in the countries occupied by Germany, Jews suffered persecution, violence, and death.

In 1942, the Nazis decided that the Jewish problem, as they called it, must have a definitive solution. The Nazis ordered that all Jews in Europe should be killed. Jews were taken to concentration camps, where they were subjected to severe violence. They died of starvation, illness and hard labour. Millions of Jews were taken directly to extermination camps, where they were murdered in gas chambers.

About six million Jews were murdered during the Nazi's time in power, mainly between 1938 and 1945. This genocide is called the Holocaust. - Did they kill your mom and dad in one of those camps? - Hm - Just because they were Jews? - Yes.