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ANTI-SEMITISM.   Term Paper ID:23808 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Historical overview of anti-Semitism from Middle Ages to end of WWII, focusing on Germany & U.S. from 1900 to end of WWII. Assimilation, immigration, ghettoization, politics, religion, law.... More...

8 Pages / 1800 Words 5 sources, 10 Citations, TURABIAN Format $32.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Historical overview of anti-Semitism from Middle Ages to end of WWII, focusing on Germany & U.S. from 1900 to end of WWII. Assimilation, immigration, ghettoization, politics, religion, law. Paper Introduction: At the beginning of the twentieth century, antisemitism was openly espoused everywhere in the Western world, even in the most respectable circles, to a degree that cannot easily be appreciated today. In consequence, Jews throughout Europe and the United States lived in a state of uncertainty, usually "tolerated" but seldom fully accepted. In the course of the following forty years, European and American Jewry would experience radically different fates. Nazi Germany would attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe, and would succeed in killing some six million of them. At the same time, American Jews would move more nearly into the mainstream of national life than perhaps any other Jewish community in the Western world. The following discussion will compare the dramatically divergent experiences and fates of the Jewish communities in Germany and Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. That said, the terrible intensity of Nazi antisemitism was perhaps ahistorical accident rooted in the personality of Adolf Hitler. Weimar Germanywas liberal, and the reaction to it thus tended to be strongest on theRight. [8]Ibid. At the same time, American Jews would move more nearlyinto the mainstream of national life than perhaps any other Jewishcommunity in the Western world. In general, the Right in most countries was associated withreligious and ethnic particularism, and the Left with a greater degree oftolerance. He did not grasp the frightful sincerity of theNazis. The Distorted Image: German Jewish Perceptionsof Germans and Germany, 1918-1935. In the course of the MiddleAges, however, religion gave a further, indirect impetus to antisemitism.Church laws forbade Christians to lend at interest, leaving Jews as theonly available bankers and moneylenders. Antisemitism was on the rise,popularly and institutionally; universities for example were setting quotaslimiting the number of Jewish students. In thecourse of the following forty years, European and American Jewry wouldexperience radically different fates. The history of the twentieth century suggests that nosociety is immune from the power of hate, but in America it wasmarginalized by events, while in Germany it triumphed, at least till thedestruction it sought for others was wrought upon itself. In the transition from the 192 s to the 193 s, however, Germany andthe United States moved politically in opposite direction. Most children ofimmigrants learned English and picked up American folkways, often (as withother immigrants) at the price of interfamilial tension betweentraditionalist parents and their Americanized offspring. [3]Alfred D. Since creditors are seldompopular with debtors, this became a further source of resentment,stereotypes, and bigotry, which though historically derived from religiousgrounds was itself independent of religion. Most German Jews could not bring themselves to believe thatthe progress they had seemingly made toward integration into German lifecould prove so illusory.[9] The situation of German Jewry had remainedstable in the years leading to the First World War, and outwardly seemedeven better in the Weimar years, when liberalism was for the first timedominant in Germany. Bibliography Bolkosky, Sidney M. [1 ]Teller, 171.----------------------- 11 These new immigrants were thus both more numerous and moreidentifiable than earlier American Jews. In order to understand the context in which Jews and their neighborslived in both Germany and the United States in the first four decades ofthe twentieth century, it may be useful to briefly sketch in the historicalbackground of Jewish life and antisemitism in the Western world since thatworld began to take on its modern form in the Middle Ages. Sachar, Howard M. Neither outcome could have beenguessed at the turn of the century. New York: Elsevier, 1975. At the beginning of the twentieth century, antisemitism was openlyespoused everywhere in the Western world, even in the most respectablecircles, to a degree that cannot easily be appreciated today. Growing religious fervor and Europe's economic growth after 1 bothfed the fires of antisemitism. German townspeople hadfrequent contact with Jews, but in restrictive contexts that fed intostereotypes, and there was little personal contact. While antisemitism was found on both the Right and elements of the Left,it had not become a rallying point as it had on the French Right. It was, however, brief andshortlived. Inconsequence, Jews throughout Europe and the United States lived in a stateof uncertainty, usually "tolerated" but seldom fully accepted. While German Jewry seemed on a course toward social assimilation,American Jewry was growing rapidly, and in a way that suggested thepossibility of "dis-assimilation." As already noted, Jews had been part ofAmerican life since before the Revolution, but they were relatively few innumber, widely scattered, and themselves of too diverse an origin toconstitute an easily defineable Jewish community. But the very association of German Jews withliberalism--and thus, if indirectly, with the humiliation of defeat in 1918--thrust antisemitism to the forefront of Germany's reactionary Right. New York: Delacorte, 1968.----------------------- [1]Paula Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry,19 6-1939 (New York: Columbia University, 1979). New York:Knopf, 1992. New York: Columbia University, 1979. Antisemitism remained widespread, evenpervasive (as it most of Europe) but in spite of an upsurge about in thelast decade or two of the century, antisemitism gave every appearance ofbeing in a longer-term decline, with German Jews on the verge of beingaccepted as good Germans.[4] Above all, the "Jewish question" was simplynot high on the agenda of public concern, as it was in contemporary France. Jewish immigrants were only one element of the stream pouringthrough Ellis Island in those years, alongside Poles, Italians, evenArmenians--all groups that had previously been only a small part of theAmerican ethnic mix.[5] The bulk of Jewish immigration was from Poland andRussia, though there was a strong German element in their culture (Yiddish,for example, is a German dialect). In the United States, the political movement was in the oppositedirection. From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry,19 6-1939. A History of the Jews in America. Jews had lived in the United States since beforethe Revolution,[2] relatively few in number and inconspicuous, but fairlywell-accepted and subject (by the standards of the time) to little overtantisemitism. The notorious Dreyfus case (in which aJewish officer in the French army was framed on an espionage charge),divided French politics and society for decades; while the issues wentbeyond antisemitism, the Dreyfus affair thrust the status and identity ofFrench Jews into the heart of the deepest tensions in French society.[1]French society in 19 --and in the decades following--grew more rather thanless openly antisemitic. It was thus perhapsalmost inevitable that a rightist reaction in Germany would sieze uponantisemitism as a rallying issue. At the turn of the century, this was changing, due to the rapidimmigration. To a much greater degree thanprevious American Jews, the new immigrants were concentrated in particularcommunities, mainly in large cities and especially in New York City. In contrast, the German Jewish community seemedin 19 to be making steady progress toward full acceptance in German life. While antisemitic beliefs were held in theabstract, there was no living tradition of communal hostility betweenneighbors of differing religion and folkways. Contrariwise, the limited toleration accorded to Jews in medievalGermany--where they were allowed to remain, but confined to ghettoes andrestricted to certain (mostly unpopular) occupations--provided a source ofcommunal tensions that kept antisemitism active. In such conditions,stereotyping and bigotry tended to be self-reinforcing. Teller, Strangers and Natives: The Evolution of the AmericanJew from 1921 to the Present (New York: Delacorte, 1968), 5. Low, Jews in the Eyes of the Germans: From theEnlightenment to Imperial Germany (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study ofHuman Issues, 1979), 13-14. This was reinforced by the experience of defeat in the First WorldWar; among German nationalists, it became an article of faith that "Jewsand liberals" had contributed to the German defeat. Nazi Germany would attempt toexterminate the Jews of Europe, and would succeed in killing some sixmillion of them. Hyman, Paula. The Right was ascendent in the 192 s; in the wake of theDepression, political power shifted to the liberal New Deal. Antisemitism inthe Western world initially had religious roots, and the "blood libel"remained at its root even to modern times. German Jewry, at the same time,stood on the verge of annihilation. Strangers and Natives: The Evolution of the AmericanJew from 1921 to the Present. Teller, Judd L. A thoughtful observer of America in 19 might likewise haveconcluded that the future fate of American Jews was to be more isolatedfrom American life, more subject to antisemitism, than had been the case inthe fairly recent past. But the America of 19 was receiving a great infusion ofJewish emigrants from Eastern Europe. [7]Judd L. Low, Alfred D. WinstonChurchill is supposed to have once told a Nazi official that "antisemitismis a strong starter but a poor finisher." Churchill presumed that Naziantisemitism was merely a Machiavellian ploy, the creation of a scapegoatfor political reason. It was noted earlier that in the Middle Ages, religious antisemitismhad given rise indirectly to a non-religious antisemitism, as Jews wereforced into certain professions that lent themselves to stereotyping.Political divisions had a similar effect in the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies. Moreover, mass immigration brought with it a nativist reaction, asIrish immigration had in the 184 s, and as non-European immigration has inrecent years. Jews in the Eyes of the Germans: From theEnlightenment to Imperial Germany. [2]Howard M. The sheer ethnicand cultural diversity of American life worked against ghettoization; evenprejudice found so many potential targets that antisemitism was forced tocompete with other forms of bigotry. As Jewish families trickledinto England and the early United States, they tended to adapt to thefolkways of the people around them. Philadelphia: Institute for the Studyof Human Issues, 1979. Nevertheless, with the waning of religious zeal and the rise of theEnlightenment, the legal and social strictures against German Jews weregradually relaxed.[3] In the Imperial Germany of 19 , an increasinglybroad range of professions were open to Jews, and indeed they wereimportant contributors to the cultural and scientific achievements in whichall Germans took great pride. Yet Germany's Jewish communities survived, whereas incontrast all Jews were forcibly expelled from England in the thirteenthcentury, not to be re-admitted till Oliver Cromwell permitted Jews tosettle in England in the seventeenth century. Suchconcentration carried with it the possibility of a ghettoization notpreviously seen in America.[6] This possibility was not confined to Jews;this was also the age of Chinatowns, "Little Italies," and other otherethnic enclaves that were at risk of being marginalized in American life. The First Crusade led to massacres of Jewsin Germany in 1 96. The theme of one type ofantisemitism leading by derivation to another type is one we will find atwork in the twentieth century as well. Bolkosky, The Distorted Image: German Jewish Perceptionsof Germans and Germany, 1918-1935 (New York: Elsevier, 1975), 18 . 2 . Sachar, A History of the Jews in America (New York: Knopf,1992), p. Both were the product ofcircumstances. These immigrants arrived knowing little or no English, little ornothing of their new country, and with a centuries-long history ofconfinement in ghettoes and stetls. [6]Ibid., 154. Indeed, the beginning of anti-immigrant legislation in 1921 wassignificant in the Americanization of the new Jewish immigrant population.For example, the use of Yiddish started to decline from that point; cut offnow from their past, the new immigrant American Jews were thrust forwardinto their future.[7] Another event of the same year confirmed the newdirection; a court decision in favor of largely-Jewish workers in a labordispute gave the Jewish immigrant population a confidence in Americanjustice they had seldom had in that of their homelands.[8] In the immediate wake of Hitler's rise to power in 1933, there was arise in German Jewish emigration from Germany. At the beginning of the Second World War, the social situation ofAmerican Jewry was still guarded, but antisemitism--though nevereradicated, and still very much alive--would soon be removed entirely fromthe realm of American public discourse. Thus, Jews could be seen asindividuals, not members of an "other" gorup. While the Klan was most of all associated with racism directedagainst African-Americans, antisemitism also ranked high in the Klan'slitany of hate. By the 192 s, the nativist reaction was in full swing.Restrictive immigration laws were passed that nearly cut off Jewish (andother Eastern and Southern European) immigration. [5]Sachar, 116-17. None the less, ghettoization did not take hold. While therewere antisemitic elements among Democrats, American Jews were also part ofthe New Deal alliance, and the sons and grandsons of immigrants wereprominent in Roosevelt's Brain Trust.[1 ] The leading antisemites of the193 s were not members of the New Deal government, but were numbered amongits fiercest opponents. The 192 s were also theheyday of the Ku Klux Klan, which at that time claimed up to four millionmembers. Ironically, the medievalexpulsion of England's Jews probably contributed to the relatively modestlevel of antisemitism in later England, and in the English colonies thatbecame the United States. Britons or Americans who met Jews forthe first time were likely to be struck by the fact that they bore noresemblance to the the traditional stereotype. Had someone living in the year 19 been told that within half acentury, a major European country would embark on a systematic effort toexterminate European Jewry, it is rather unlikely that the person who heardthis grim prophesy would have guessed that the country would be Germany.The likeliest suspect at that time would have been Russia, where popularantisemitism was intense, and was reinforced by official Tsarist policy; itwas the Tsarist secret police who forged the "Protocols of the Elders ofZion," the great source of twentieth-century Jewish-conspiracy theories.France, too, would in 19 have seemed far more likely to descend intoradical antisemitism than Germany. Unsurprisingly, then, Jewish political activism tended to bedirected in a liberal or leftist direction; such was the case in bothGermany and the United States. The possibility might have seemedquite real in 19 that the barriers that had confined Jews in the OldWorld would be reproduced in the New. [4]Ibid., 36 . [9]Sidney M. The following discussion will compare thedramatically divergent experiences and fates of the Jewish communities inGermany and the United States in the period from 194 till the Second WorldWar. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.