For centuries, the Jewish people have faced severe mistreatment. While we often recall the mass killings during Hitler’s time, their persecution dates back much further. To grasp why Hitler targeted Jews as scapegoats, we need to recognize the deep-seated hatred against them across Europe, not just in Germany.
Biblical Times
The Old Testament tells the story of the Jewish people, who are called the ‘chosen people’ because they made a promise with God to follow his laws. After being exiled in Egypt, they were led back to Israel by Moses around 1100 BC, where they established their own land.
In the time before Jesus was born, the Romans conquered the Middle East and Judea, making it part of their empire. The New Testament describes how the Romans ruled Judea, and it was under the orders of a Roman governor named Pilate that Jesus was crucified, despite protests from some Jews. The Romans often found the Jews troublesome because they only worshipped one god and didn’t allow the worship of Roman gods in their temples, although the Romans sometimes respected the Jewish God.
When there were uprisings, the Romans responded harshly. After the defeat at Masada, Jewish rebellion was crushed, and the Romans forced the Jews out of Judea in AD 135 (known as the Diaspora). Normally, groups like the Babylonians and the Hittites disappeared from history after such events, but the Jews didn’t. They survived despite being scattered across the Roman Empire and beyond. Understanding why they survived helps us understand the persecution they faced later on.
Keeping the Faith
The agreement with God united the Jewish people: if they followed his rules, they would remain his chosen people no matter what happened. This belief helped them stay together but also set them apart from other cultures. The strict rules they followed didn’t always match the rules of the societies they lived in. To follow their own laws, they had to limit contact with outsiders. This separation helped them survive, but it also made them targets for persecution. They stood out as different, strange, and even threatening.
Unlike religions like Christianity or Islam, where people could convert, being Jewish was based on birth. Jews rarely accepted converts into their faith. If they had been focused on converting others, they might have clashed more directly with other societies. But that didn’t happen.
Being outsiders was hard, but having power made others uneasy, especially those in charge. Unlike early Christianity, where priests were often the only ones who could read and interpret God’s word, all Jewish men had to be literate to read the Torah and discuss its meaning. This was rare in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages. What mattered was not just being able to read, but also questioning and debating what was read. This made the Jewish people literate and encouraged them to seek knowledge through debate.
The Rewards
It’s no surprise that Jewish people often became professionals like doctors, lawyers, advisors, and bankers. In older societies, owning land was seen as wealth, and those who owned it didn’t usually work because they were rulers and soldiers. But Jews didn’t own land and were often forbidden from doing so. However, they had skills that the landowners needed but didn’t want to learn themselves. While the ruling class had plenty of workers and soldiers, there weren’t many doctors.
Jewish professionals were paid in cash, but they couldn’t always buy land with it. So, they ended up with money, which they used to start money-lending businesses and banks. Since Christianity didn’t allow charging interest on loans, Jews often became the bankers in society.
This shows that Jews lived independently all over the world and often kept to themselves, but they also provided important services to the local people. This gave them power that could be seen as threatening. However, this power also protected them from persecution.
Besides having money and power, Jews also had knowledge. In a time when ideas didn’t spread much, Jews were unique. They lived in settlements all over the world and learned the language and wisdom of the local people. They shared this knowledge among themselves through travel and books. So, a Jewish doctor in Scotland might use knowledge from Syria to treat patients. But sometimes, what was normal in one place could be seen as strange or even dangerous in another.
Persecution
The first persecutions against the Jewish people were because of religion. They were blamed for killing Jesus and were seen as practicing black magic because they didn’t follow or believe in Jesus. This hatred came from local people, but leaders in different societies also stirred up this hate for various reasons. It could be a Christian church leader, a knight who owed money to a Jewish money-lender, a jealous doctor, or an advisor who lost favor with a king.
In the 19th century, religious persecution turned into racial persecution. Jews were seen as parasites. This change happened because of Social Darwinism and rising nationalism in Europe. Jews were viewed as outsiders who didn’t belong and were seen as a threat to society. Hitler experienced similar feelings when he lived in old Imperial Vienna before 1914.
In both cases, religious and racial persecution were just cover-ups for the real reason why Jews were seen as threatening. It was because they historically held positions of power that created jealousy, which sometimes turned into violence during troubled times.
In the 20th century, another reason for persecution was added: the Jewish connection to Communism. In 1897, the first Zionist conference was held in Basel, where Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, talked about sending Jews to Palestine to build a homeland. Zionist thinkers also discussed creating a society with less class division, similar to socialism. Then, in 1917, the Russian revolution happened, and one of its leaders, Trotsky, was Jewish. He believed in a worldwide revolution, and this idea found support in Germany, where many leaders in the ‘Munich Soviet’ of 1918-19 were Jewish. So, Jewish thinkers were associated with one of the most radical ideas of the 20th century. In Nazi Germany, Hitler used a mix of Social Darwinism, Communism, Socialism, and war-profiteering to fuel the hatred against Jews from the 1920s to the 1940s.
Conclusion
Anti-Semitism didn’t start with Hitler. It’s been around in Europe for over 2000 years. When the Jews were kicked out of their homeland by the Romans, their efforts to keep their religion alive became a major reason they survived as a group. But because they were visible and had power, they seemed threatening to the societies they lived in.
The fate of the Jews reflects what happens to minorities everywhere. They’re accepted until they seem dangerous to society, then they’re turned against. The Holocaust is a stark reminder of what society can do when it turns on its own people.
Hitler used people’s tendency to blame those who are different in tough times. But the truth is more complicated than the simple picture he painted. We shouldn’t hate someone because of their race or beliefs, but we’re often made to hate a stereotype we’ve never even met.
