Hey kiddo, this post is long! You better brew yourself a pot of coffee and retrieve a bag of M&Ms to have a chance of survival. Still, it is only a rough draft. I am scratching the surface of a few issues, ripping open a couple of old wounds perhaps, yet this is not the location nor the time for in depth elaborations.
People will be upset with me, and some peace-loving folks are likely to have violent thoughts. If that happens to be you--live with it, baby: it's a healthy response. I don't have answers and I'm not peddling solutions. I am about to drag questions into the open that stink like a dead roof rat.
If you don't have proper answers, relax, and don't blame me for bringing it up. Dense as I am, I didn't invent this stuff. It's history, unfortunately. For years I've been brooding over these questions. You'll have the privilege to see them first. Here goes:
Lox and cream cheese was on the bagel that I purchased this morning. The store manager asked me about my t-shirt: Fetchez la vache!
It's out of Spamalot, by Eric Idle, a "musical lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Paul, Einstein's manager, had never heard of Monty Python who, on October 5th, 2009, celebrated the 40th anniversary of their debut on TV when the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus was aired on the BBC. The Gods of comedy conquered the world but Paul hadn't noticed.
It is a heinous crime that gently pampered Gen Y persons grew up oblivious to the existence of Monty Python, but on the grand scale of things it matters not. What does matter is our distorted perspective of history. We have mastered the art of making things invisible and that, unfortunately, is not limited to Monty Python.
Indigestible chunks of history have been repackaged with palatable labels. Why should we let bloody facts get in our way? History is being used like a condom: everybody can stretch it as one sees fit. Well, so can I. Besides, we prefer not to get in touch with the grimy parts history screwed us with. As dirty as history will always be, at least our role during the time in question appears to be impeccable. And that's what counts most.
An example, you ask? Let us choose an easy subject: the damn Holocaust. Who did it?
Hitler.
Single-handedly?
I have problems believing that. It is likely that Adolf Hitler never killed anybody besides his wife and his dog. Not counting the things that the Gefreite aus Böhmen may have done in the trenches as a soldier during World War I, naturally.
The Nazis did it!
You mean my dad?
He joined the Nazi party to save his scrawny ass and the 800-year-old family farm. Since he was short of workers--they had been recruited to do what Hitler didn't do himself--my father also gained cheap Polish slave laborers with his brilliant decision to become a Nazi. Oh, that makes me realize that my dad was the only slave owner I have known personally. And I knew my father as a man who couldn't hurt a fly. I admit: I loved a slave driver and a Nazi.
Did my dad murder six million Jews?
I don't know.
I used to be afraid that some day I may come across a picture in a random book--of uniformed German creatures executing Jewish families right next to an open mass grave--and recognizing my dad as the one pulling the trigger.
Fortunately I never saw him in such a picture, but that doesn't prove his innocence. Most likely he didn't lie and he was never near such places and activities of horror. But I don't know. I never will.
Our parents and grandparents didn't talk much. The little they did say may not have been true. Hell--I can't blame them, really--what we say about recent history isn't blessed with too many truisms either. We can't even agree on the who-did-what during the last 12 months. Few Germans know what precisely their fathers and mothers were busy with in the 1930s and '40s. What do you know about your parents' time before you were born? Not much? So, there.
Perhaps my father slaughtered 6,000,000 Jews, personally. Or none, and I have felt guilty throughout my entire life for nothing. What if guilt needs no reason to exist? What if the Jews were killed for no reason? What if people, who had no reason to kill the Jews and didn't mean to harm anyone, in fact killed six million Jewish individuals?
The meek did it.
That's insane?
I will tell you what is insane: the NAAF Holocaust Project (slogan: "Never Again, Always and Forever") begins their Time Line in the year 1933: "The seeds of the Holocaust began with the evolution of Adolf Hitler's maniacal dreams based on his interpretation of Germanic history, the quest for the 'Aryan ideal', and a lust for power."
Right. That's how it all went down.
Or did it? See, Jewish folks are just as capable of bullshitting people about history as anybody else.
Am I denying the Shoah (השואה)? Of course not. But heaps of garbage have been written about the Holocaust and what ought to be done to prevent it from reoccurring. I am just adding to the pile. I vehemently deny that "the seeds of the Holocaust began with the evolution of Adolf Hitler's maniacal dreams" in 1933. That is not a historical fact: it's wishful thinking. Countless groups and people benefit from such nonsense, I understand, but a lie it is nevertheless.
"The Jews are a nervous people. Nineteen centuries of Christian love have taken a toll," was Benjamin Disraeli's opinion.
Uh, so the fatal love of Jews did not begin 1933?
"Nazi anti-Judaism was the work of godless, anti-Christian criminals. But it would not have been possible without the almost two thousand years' pre-history of Christian anti-Judaism..." said the German Catholic Theologian Hans Küng.
Sigh. I am happy that I am not the only crazy guy in the room!
I beg to differ with Mr. Küng, as far as the "godless, anti-Christian criminals" are concerned, but I let that slide. A man who was stabbed in the back by his former friend Joseph Ratzinger, currently Pope Benedict XVI, needs a little extra love.
Hitler was a Catholic until his belated death. He didn't leave the church. To my--admittedly limited--knowledge, the Catholic church never excommunicated him and they didn't feel to ban Adolf's book 'Mein Kampf.' The Talmud, however, has been banned (and burned) multiple times, starting in 1190. Anyway, Nazi anti-Judaism was the work of--more or less--Christian criminals.
Also Christians went to concentration camps for their faith and died--individuals like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for instance--yet Christian churches did nothing to protect their flock. They were too busy building alliances with the powers in charge. The Protestant and the Catholic churches did what they have always done: maintain and gain power, in that order.
The fate of an individual--or of a few million individuals here and there--was of little concern. After signing the Reichskonkordat--a treaty between the Pope and Nazi Germany--on July 20th, 1933, Cardinal Pacelli told an English representative that the Holy See had only entered the agreement to preserve the Catholic Church in Germany. As I said, maintaining power was objective Numero Uno.
Yeah, but at that time the church couldn't know what Hitler was up to?
Cute.
On April 10th, 1933, less than three weeks after Hitler assumed power, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber wrote to Cardinal Pacelli--who would later become Pope Pius XII--advising that defending the Jews would be wrong “because that would transform the attack on the Jews into an attack on the Church; and because the Jews are able to look after themselves.”
Hitler met the representative of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Wilhelm Berning of Osnabrück, on April 26, about three months before the Vatican jumped into bed with Adolf H. At that meeting, Hitler declared:
“I have been attacked because of my handling of the Jewish question. The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc., because it recognized the Jews for what they were. In the epoch of liberalism the danger was no longer recognized. I am moving back toward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year-long tradition was implemented. I do not set race over religion, but I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the Church, and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.”
How did Bishop Berning respond, you ask? Not at all, according to the notes.
That kinda shows that the 'NAAF Holocaust Project' is a bit off by inventing that Hitler's maniacal dreams started anything, eh? Hitler, the maniac, picked up maniacal Catholic ideas and the Catholic church didn't object. Much worse, the concordat gave Hitler and his crew power and confidence he didn't have before. Cardinal Weasel Faulhaber again, in a sermon delivered in 1937:
"At a time when the heads of the major nations in the world faced the new Germany with cool reserve and considerable suspicion, the Catholic Church, the greatest moral power on earth, through the Concordat expressed its confidence in the new German government. This was a deed of immeasurable significance for the reputation of the new government abroad."
Hans Küng is correct, criminals committed the actual murder of Jews, Gypsies, gays (the NAAF doesn't bother to mention gay people), the handicapped, and others. But "anti-Christian criminals?" Not so much. Christianity was a material witness to each and every single crime Nazi Germany committed against human beings since Hitler piped up in 1933.
Imagine the Pope had threatened every Catholic member of the NSDAP (Nazi party) with instant excommunication. Could that have altered the course of history? Alas, it is a futile idea.
I am not defending Hitler. On the contrary, he was 100% responsible but that does not relieve anybody else of their responsibility. Whoever names Hitler as the main perpetrator of the Holocaust has one purpose only: to get their own arses out of this mess while looking sufficiently innocent.
Take the German government, for example. They won't permit 'Mein Kampf' to be read by Germans. They believe their subjects are weak and easily corruptible. That book is so evil that it will magically overpower the fragile little minds of German citizens and make them do more things they will regret. You can't legally display a swastika in Germany. If you do, the dumb and intrinsically genocidal Germans will erect gas chambers, start killing innocent people, and eat babies immediately.
Emotional development at Kindergarten level, incapable to evolve. That's what Germans think and expect of each other. At least, the pitiful behavior of their government suggests that. Their degenerate idea of 'freedom of speech'--the step from 'Entarteter Kunst' ('Degenerate Art') to 'Degenerate Freedom' is a small one--reflects this self-imposed damnation to eternal adolescence. I have never been proud to be a German and sadly, today it is as difficult as ever.
If you have ever cracked open a copy of Adolf's hideous double-tome, you know that it is not humanly possible to read it. It's unbelievably poorly written (even worse than this blog). Yet, it is worthy of jail time. In a country that practically legalized murder, temporarily, it is now a crime to sell the worst conceivable text document.
As I said, free speech was not invented in Germany. No trace of the "master race" here: Germans are reckless and cowardly, simultaneously. Reckless, because they appear to have little qualms about limiting freedom. Cowardly, as they are scared of a single book.
These people are superstitious and paranoid, you say? Haunted by a book and a symbol? Not at all. They accuse scribbled ink, a horrendous book, and a dead guy as a maneuver to distract you from history and reality. We can't let history get in the way of saying what we want you to believe.
Not unlike the Jewish organization NAAF, Germans believe that the Holocaust came and went within a dozen years. Keeps the rest of history unsoiled and somewhat shiny.
See, I was born in 1953 after the war ended. Not guilty. Same is true for the Catholic and the Lutheran Protestant churches: the damn Germans did it but not the Christians. Not guilty! Cardinal Pacelli alias Pope Pius XII? Not guilty. France, Austria, and Switzerland (the neutered one)? Not guilty. Everybody loves the 'Holocaust Lite' cliche: from 1933 - 1945, the Nazis did bad things in Germany. Let's shrink the truth a bit and exercise damage control.
Indeed, the Nazis committed unspeakable crimes. That verbiage includes my dad, doesn't it? True or not, storing history as a thumbnail image in our memory won't improve our past or our future.
So far, so good. Let's throw some decent 'hatred' into the borshtsh, and intolerance. Shall we? Antisemitism, intolerance, and hatred are the crappiest myths blamed for igniting the Holocaust.
What a harebrained idea! We just have to teach tolerance, love, and forbid our kids to hate. Bingo! No holocaust will ever happen again. Life will be beautiful and peaceful ever after. Utter idiocy, reckless and ruthless rubbish.
C'mon, are we that ignorant?! I know, I am not making many friends here. Martin Luther, Voltaire, the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Richard Wagner, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh--all of these guys were guilty of antisemitism but as far as I know they didn't kill or maim people.
Admittedly, I can't stand antisemitic talk. When I hear it, I usually ridicule that human spittoon of a speaker before I withdraw my attention and walk away. Antisemitism is rather boring than dangerous, and often it sounds like Richard Dawkins waxing sentimental over atheism and frothing about religion. Hoo, how scary!
Especially because I grew up in an environment recovering from controlled thought and speech, I gladly fight for an individual's freedom to make an ass of herself. Others' rights to say what they want match my right to see and hear clearly who they are. I have an interest in people feeling free to appear as nutty as they are. The freedom to express antisemitism has the power to save lives.
Say wha...? Honestly, aren't you grateful that Mahmud Ahmadineshad, the little piss-twerp, can say what he wants, enabling Israel and the rest of us to contemplate countermeasures?
Antisemites have murdered Jews, sure, and antisemitic individuals in general are as guilty of the Holocaust as I am, but antisemitism per se has never killed anybody. It's a word, a concept, and as such antisemitism is as innocent as the swastika, a dozen Mohammad cartoons, or Salman Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses.'
Wanna hate me? Go ahead, hate me!
Apropos 'hatred:' some people have hated me my entire life. So? Supports my vanity. I hate stuff as well. I hate the frowning nannies of the world who eagerly suffocate individualism and free markets. I hate dorks who lack the slightest sense of humor. And I hate celery sticks.
Does it matter that and what I hate? Of course not. Hatred is an integral part of our emotional spectrum, and it is childish to believe that you could teach people to unlearn it. Good luck training your brats to never be sad.
Teaching others that hatred killed the Jews is risky business, and potentially deadly: it implies that those who didn't hate the Jews were innocent, and that those who don't hate today will look forward to an innocent future. There is depravity in hating hatred. Obvious, isn't it?
You mean we just love everybody, evoke peace, and nobody gets hurt? Few things are as reprehensible as the self-righteousness of love and peace loving saints. What arrogance to assume that voyeurs of mass murder are innocent!
"I don't hate anybody. So I couldn't have done it." Sounds like the kid with the soccer ball under his arm, standing next to the shattered window, proclaiming, "I didn't do it!"
"All honest men killed Ceasar ... some lacked the design, some courage, some opportunity: none lacked the will," said Mr. Cicero. Even the Germans who "lacked the will," even those who desired for all Jews to live, flourish, and prosper, and even people who died before 1933 or were born after 1945--how innocent are we? Very? A little? Not at all?
I would be surprised if the average school teacher who shows his pupils grisly Holocaust pictures and drills them, "Thou shalt not hate," had the spine to defend the same kids with his life from the threats of SS men. He would have to hate, and he'd have to be willing to kill and die to save lives. Choosing to stay innocent can kill the innocent.
More innocent Germans than guilty ones murdered the Jews.
What about 'tolerance?' Moses Mendelssohn wrote: "Such a tolerance ... is even more dangerous play in tolerance than open persecution."
Don't tolerate me! Tolerance is a well-measured slap in the face of those we neither love nor respect. Tolerance insults the human being who endures it! Hate me if you can't love me, but don't you dare to insult me with your stinking tolerance. We tolerate a horse fly on the wall until we have nothing better to do than to finally get the fly swatter. I tolerate nobody and trust me, it's better for you.
Goodness, the pious impertinence hidden in the term 'tolerance' is intolerable. In case you are looking for evil words you can readily indict as murderous, try 'indifference' and 'tolerance.' Your and my tolerance kills people every damn day in North Korea. Sanctimonious preachers and teachers of tolerance are wolves in sheep's clothing. They don't promote peace. They only peddle THEIR peace--brutally and selfishly--and they don't care how many people's lives that costs.
Tolerant, peaceful Germans committed the Holocaust.
You mean, like my dad?
We're getting ahead of ourselves. Back to the reasons for the 'Holocaust Lite' cliche. Why do we favor historically distorted thumbnail pictures over a broader image that comes closer to the truth? We mentioned that Germans like to keep their dirt limited to the years 1933 - 45. The French liked to see it all as a German issue. For 40 years, they were only "victims too."
Until 1995, when Jacques Chirac "was able to admit that the state bore a heavy share of responsibility in the mass round-ups and deportations of Jews, as well as in the property and asset seizures that were carried out with the active help of the Vichy regime."
Oops, the French are capable and guilty of mass murder? No really? Who would have thought?! For the past 60 years the French pussies should have looked almost as ugly as my father, and they should have been treated with similar suspicion. Non?
"The state," dear Mr. Chirac, the "Vichy regime?" True, but wouldn't you surmise that people, flesh-and-blood individuals, were a bit involved as well? I am afraid 'responsibility' will remain the most slippery word in any language, used as sloppily as we can get away with. We just can't handle responsibility, neither individually nor collectively.
What if only those were "innocent" who haven't been accused and who haven't admitted their active or passive participation yet? How about the Jewish people? What's their interest in the hit-me-over-the-head-with-a-2x4 school teacher's version? Simple. They don't want to look like the French.
Pardon!
No seriously, if we didn't define the Holocaust as a temporary German problem, the Jewish people were forced to accuse everybody. Yep, pretty much everybody! Check out the time line at the end of my sermon and you'll get the picture.
And going after every antisemitic evidence that has reared its ugly head during the past 1,000 years plus is not as efficient as the sharp focus on 1,000 evil Germans ... well, and those who offered a helping hand:
"Historians estimate the number of non-German "killing workers" (a term coined by German writer Ralph Giordano) at about 200,000. There is probably no other group of criminals that has proven more difficult to prosecute than the Nazis' non-German helpers and accomplices." --ABC News
An Israeli friend of mine--she escaped Germany in the 1930s--told me how stunned she has been throughout her life about the fact that a handful of German SS peeps (imagine Motor Vehicle Division employees with rifles) were able to control a transport of over a thousand Jews. Every single time!
Why?
Because German Jewish victims were made of the same stock as their executioners: they were first and foremost like German Shepherds, born and raised to swallow orders for breakfast, used to bark or be barked at, to patiently stand in line until they reached either the cash register or the gas chamber.
Damn me, but six million Jews let it happen as tens of millions of passive, spineless and peaceful German citizens allowed it to happen. People died because of their worthless hope. Jews hoped to save their lives by cooperating with their butchers. Germans hoped to save their worthless hides by shutting up. In the name of peace. "Let's not rock the boat, Hans-Ludwig, and think of the children!"
The 'Holocaust Lite' versions of history have made millions of people in Europe feel good about themselves, and not just the French. Survivors and the children of the victims have found an agreement with the ex-perps (my dad) and their brood (me). Let's clip the story down to 12 handy German years. Done. Never again ...
Result: in the U.S. I can hardly find a person who doesn't believe that the eerie horror of the Third Reich was synonymous with the Holocaust. Hitler = Holocaust. There it is. Artificially and officially, the Holocaust has become the most important event of the 20th century.
That is just too silly. The millennium-old German and European sentiment against the Jewish people was a welcome vehicle to unify dull masses, a driving force to get the train out of the station toward world dominance. But the Holocaust was only a milestone for these clowns, and certainly not the destination.
Oh dear, I do not intend to discount the suffering or make light of the death of millions of Jewish people. Not at all. But the Holocaust is simply not the only reason why the Third Reich was a time of horror. The Holocaust was a sideshow. Neither were Hitler and his creeps the only ones spilling blood by the barrel. Stalin murdered nearly 30 million of his own people, and chairman Mao? 'The Australian' prints:
"For if the Chinese Communist Party deserved only a single entry in the testimony of history, it would be this: starting in the northern spring of 1959, China's leadership willfully enabled the deaths of about 36 million of its citizens, and then watched as they suffered, expired and even consumed each other's flesh. Neither Stalin nor Hitler, nor any of the other protagonists in either of the 20th century's world wars, could match this scale of political and humanitarian nihilism."
Yeah, but that's only 36 million people and not 6,000,000 and besides, the 36 million were Mao's own people. The question arises whether 6 dead Chinese persons can measure up to one dea... good God! We shall not go there! Anyway, I believe the number that's mentioned in this article by 'The Australian' is quite conservative and the victims of the Chinese Communist Party amounts to approximately 60 million individuals who perished thanks to their own fine government.
Please help me here:
We are desperately trying to prevent future slaughter of people, but we don't really care when governments torture and execute their own subjects? Women get stoned to death in Afghanistan, limbs get cut off in Saudi Arabia, gays are being hung in Iran, the Tutsi kill 100,000 Hutu (1972 in Burundi), or the Hutu chop up 800,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi (Rwanda, 1994)? Does that matter? Sad and it shouldn't happen, but that stuff takes place in sovereign countries and as long as those countries don't threaten America, all we can do is shrug and order another Coors Lite?
Uh, except when a Canadian or U.S. citizen gets herself into trouble in Iran. Then the media smell a window of opportunity to sell some copy with a sentimental crap piece. But we don't care what governments do with their subjects. That's Amnesty International's turf.
Germans, citizens of the former 'Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' (USSR), and Chinese folks combined murdered approximately 100 million individuals within their own countries. I am not even counting fallen soldiers. When school teachers prattle on about Holocaust prevention, do they also make suggestions how to stop the Che Guevaras, Castros, Ahmadineshads, Kim Jong-Ils, and Pol Pots (responsible for killing 25% of Cambodia's population; "What is rotten must be removed," a Khmer Rouge slogan proclaimed.)?
By teaching love instead of hatred, and tolerance, I presume? Yeah, Hitler was an evil murderer while Che was a good murderer, and school kids proudly wear his picture on their t-shirts once again. A Mao shirt is cool, a Hitler shirt is not. Please tell me, why?
Uh, the Jews were not killed by their own government! They were killed by ze bloodsirsty Chermans? That's the only difference between murdered Jews and dead Chinese, Russians, Poles, Greeks, etc. and ... yes, Germans?
Not!
Jewish people were German citizens as well, and therefore exterminated by their own government, like everybody else. Don't start splitting hairs, and tell me that the Polish Jews and the French Jews weren't German. Even I know that. Still, they were delivered to their death by their own governmental authorities.
It was a race thing? One race eliminated another? Good Lord, talking about race differences is definitely musty fascist Nazi nonsense: there happens to be one human race, only. One. The German Jews were killed by their own, by Germans. By folks like my dad ... except, that he didn't do it. But that's what they all said.
Listen up!
You can't poke fun at the Holocaust. I understand. That's highly inappropriate! No other matter in the history of humankind was that serious. It's like an ongoing funeral: the responses that are permitted are practically ritualized and pre-labeled by authorities. German and Austrian governments have laws about what can or cannot be said.
A demon we aren't allowed to laugh at: during Nazi times, Germans were not permitted to say the wrong thing. Today, nobody has the permission to say the wrong thing. My parents didn't talk about the Holocaust. Children of Holocaust survivors have told me that their parents never talked about the Holocaust either. And you and I are not authorized to have a unique opinion today.
Taboo.
If you want to know what you can say, you must ask the Simon Wiesenthal Center. And then they'll tell you how to prevent the deaths of the next 6 million Jews, but not the tragic demise of the next 94 million human beings? Bumbling idiots!
If we can't talk freely, we are doomed to bury the truth with the dead. We need to be able to talk. People must have the freedom to say the wrong things about the Holocaust and about everything else!
Suffocating the "wrong words" today is equally dangerous as it was to lock dissenters into concentration camps. Several European governments are preparing laws to criminalize the insult of another person's religion. Hitler would jump up and down with delight and offer his blessings.
As far as freedom and individualism are concerned, we are still savages. And no, tattooing Chinese characters on your arse or wearing your baseball cap backward does not prove that you are an individual. Polite and politically correct, the "peaceful" avoidance of trouble and tension confirms the status quo of lurking danger.
Instead of speaking out in favor of our individual choices, we turn into eunuchs. We do everything necessary to keep things the way they are. We abstain from rocking the boat. Freedom of speech is wasted on us. For safety's sake we hold down jobs that dictate what we can't say or do. Set free, we immediately seek the shelter of slavery.
Kids in the sandlot should learn that antisemitism is a bad thing. Fine. They should learn to differentiate between the emotion of hatred and the consequences of acting on their hatred. But for you and me, there is something else to be considered:
We must think, speak, act, and laugh freely. As long as it doesn't hurt another person, we must take our freedom that nobody can give us, and expand it daily. There is no freedom unless we give ourselves permission to say and do thousands of wrong things before we'll find what's right and what works.
If we are not free we don't care about other people's freedom, as the employed don't care about the problems of employers. To my ears, the sound of a union member shouting: "Tax the rich!" is painfully similar to a Nazi screaming: "Kill the Jews!" The outcome may be different but the emotion behind both is the same.
Your daring entrepreneurial endeavors inspire and support other entrepreneurs. Your courage to stand up for capitalism provides an environment for others who enjoy making money also. Your freedom to say what you want to say--especially controversial and provocative things--is the best protection for other individuals who differ in their opinion.
The utter lack of Chutzpah caused the Holocaust. Wanna prevent the next one? Forget tolerance.
Proliferate Chutzpah.
Shalom,
Egbert Sukop
P.S: I still love my dad!
P.P.S.: Here's how the Holocaust began. Once upon a time, more than a thousand years ago ... (Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ )
70: The Roman Army destroyed Jerusalem, killed over 1 million Jews, took about 100,000 into slavery and captivity, and scattered many from Palestine to other locations in the Roman Empire.
135: Serious Roman persecution of the Jews began. They were forbidden, upon pain of death, from practicing circumcision, reading the Torah, eating unleavened bread at Passover, etc.
306: The church Synod of Elvira banned marriages, sexual intercourse and community contacts between Christians and Jews.
325: The Council of Nicea decided to separate the celebration of Easter from the Jewish Passover. They stated: "For it is unbecoming beyond measure that on this holiest of festivals we should follow the customs of the Jews. Henceforth let us have nothing in common with this odious people...We ought not, therefore, to have anything in common with the Jews...our worship follows a...more convenient course...we desire dearest brethren, to separate ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews.
337: Christian Emperor Constantius created a law which made the marriage of a Jewish man to a Christian punishable by death.
339: Converting to Judaism became a criminal offense.
367 - 376: St. Hilary of Poitiers referred to Jews as a perverse people who God has cursed forever. St. Ephroem refers to synagogues as brothels.
379-395: Emperor Theodosius the Great permitted the destruction of synagogues if it served a religious purpose. Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire at this time.
380: The bishop of Milan was responsible for the burning of a synagogue; he referred to it as "an act pleasing to God."
415: St. Augustine wrote "The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew can never understand the Scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus."
418: St. Jerome, who created the Vulgate translation of the Bible wrote of a synagogue: "If you call it a brothel, a den of vice, the Devil's refuge, Satan's fortress, a place to deprave the soul, an abyss of every conceivable disaster or whatever you will, you are still saying less than it deserves."
489 - 519: Christian mobs destroyed the synagogues in Antioch, Daphne (near Antioch) and Ravenna.
612: Jews were not allowed to own land, to be farmers or enter certain trades.
613: Very serious persecution began in Spain. Jews were given the options of either leaving Spain or converting to Christianity. Jewish children over 6 years of age were taken from their parents and given a Christian education.
722: Leo III outlawed Judaism. Jews were baptized against their will.
855: Jews were exiled from Italy.
1078: "Pope Gregory VII decreed that Jews could not hold office or be superiors to Christians."
1096: The First Crusade was launched in this year. Although the prime goal of the crusades was to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims, Jews were a second target. As the soldiers passed through Europe on the way to the Holy Land, large numbers of Jews were challenged: "Christ-killers, embrace the Cross or die!" 12,000 Jews in the Rhine Valley alone were killed in the first Crusade. This behavior continued for 8 additional crusades until the 9th in 1272.
1099: The Crusaders forced all of the Jews of Jerusalem into a central synagogue and set it on fire. Those who tried to escape were forced back into the burning building.
1121: Jews were exiled from Flanders (now part of present-day Belgium).
1146: The Second Crusade began. A French Monk, Rudolf, called for the destruction of the Jews.
1180: The French King of France, Philip Augustus, arbitrarily seized all Jewish property and expelled the Jews from the country. There was no legal justification for this action. They were allowed to sell all movable possessions, but their land and houses were stolen by the king.
1189: Jews were persecuted in England. The Crown claimed all Jewish possessions. Most of their houses were burned.
1227: The Synod of Narbonne required Jews to wear an oval badge. This requirement was reinstalled during the 1930's by Hitler, who changed the oval badge to a Star of David.
1236: Pope Gregory ordered that church leaders in England, France, Portugal and Spain confiscate Jewish books on the first Saturday of Lent.
1259: A "synod of the archdiocese in Mainz ordered Jews to wear yellow badges."
1261: Duke Henry III of Brabant, Belgium, stated in his will that "Jews...must be expelled from Brabant and totally annihilated so that not a single one remains, except those who are willing to trade, like all other tradesmen, without money-lending and usury."
1267: The Synod of Vienna ordered Jews to wear horned hats. Thomas Aquinas said that Jews should live in perpetual servitude.
1290: Jews are exiled from England. About 16,000 left the country.
1298: Jews were persecuted in Austria, Bavaria and Franconia. 140 Jewish communities were destroyed; more than 100,000 Jews were killed over a 6 month period.
1306: 100,000 Jews are exiled from France. They left with only the clothes on their backs, and food for only one day.
1320: 40,000 French shepherds went to Palestine on the Shepherd Crusade. On the way, 140 Jewish communities were destroyed.
1321: In Guienne, France, Jews were accused of having incited criminals to poison wells. 5,000 Jews were burned alive, at the stake.
1347 +: The Black Death: Rats initially carried the Black Death; their fleas spread the disease from the rats to humans. As the plague worsened, the germs spread from human to human. In five years, the death toll had reached 25 million. In England, two centuries passed before its population levels recovered from the plague. People searched for someone to blame. They noted that a smaller percentage of Jews than Christians caught the disease. This was undoubtedly due to the Jewish sanitary and dietary laws. Rumors circulated that Satan was protecting the Jews and that they were paying back the Devil by poisoning wells used by Christians. The solution was to torture, murder and burn the Jews. "In Bavaria...12,000 Jews...perished; in the small town of Erfurt...3,000; near Tours, an immense trench was dug, filled with blazing wood and in a single day 160 Jews were burned." In Strausberg 2,000 Jews were burned. In Maintz 6,000 were killed...; in Worms 400..."
1354: 12,000 Jews were executed in Toledo.
1374: An epidemic of possession broke out in the lower Rhine region of what is now Germany. People were seen "dancing, jumping and [engaging in] wild raving." The epidemic spread throughout the Rhine and in much of the Netherlands and Germany. Crowds of 500 or more dancers would be overcome together. Finally, the rumor spread that God was angry because Christians had been excessively tolerant towards the Jews. Jews "were plundered, tortured and murdered by tens of thousands."
1391: Jewish persecutions begin in Seville and in 70 other Jewish communities throughout Spain.
1394 : Jews were exiled, for the second time, from France.
1431 +: The Council of Basel "forbade Jews to go to universities, prohibited them from acting as agents in the conclusion of contracts between Christians, and required that they attend church sermons."
1434: "Jewish men in Augsburg had to sew yellow buttons to their clothes. Across Europe, Jews were forced to wear a long undergarment, an overcoat with a yellow patch, bells and tall pointed yellow hats with a large button on them.
1453 : The Franciscan monk, Capistrano, persuaded the King of Poland to terminate all Jewish civil rights.
1492 : Jews were given the choice of being baptized as Christians or be banished from Spain. 300,000 left Spain penniless. Many migrated to Turkey, where they found tolerance among the Muslims. Others converted to Christianity but often continued to practice Judaism in secret.
1497: Jews were banished from Portugal. 20 thousand left the country rather than be baptized as Christians.
1516: The Governor of the Republic of Venice decided that Jews would be permitted to live only in one area of the city. It was located in the South Girolamo parish and was called the "Ghetto Novo." This was the first ghetto in Europe. Hitler made use of the concept in the 1930's.
1523: Martin Luther distributed his essay "That Jesus Was Born a Jew. " He hoped that large numbers of Jews would convert to Christianity. They didn't, and he began to write and preach hatred against them. Luther has been condemned in recent years for being extremely antisemitic. The charge has some merit; however he was probably typical of most Christians during his era.
1540: Jews were exiled from Naples.
1543: Martin Luther wrote "On the Jews and their lies, On Shem Hamphoras" : "...eject them forever from this country. For, as we have heard, God's anger with them is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!...What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? And then, after suggesting to set their their synagogues on fire, to destroy their homes, and to forbid their rabbis under the threat of death to teach, Luther continues: "To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden - the Jews."
1550: Jews were exiled from Genoa and Venice.
1555: A Roman Catholic Papal bull, "Cum nimis absurdum," required Jews to wear badges, and live in ghettos. They were not allowed to own property outside the ghetto. Living conditions were dreadful: over 3,000 people were forced to live in about 8 acres of land. Women had to wear a yellow veil or scarf; men had to wear a piece of yellow cloth on their hat.
1582: Jews were expelled from Holland.
1648-9: Chmielnicki Bogdan led an uprising against Polish rule in the Ukraine. The secondary goal of Bogdan and his followers was to exterminate all Jews in the country. The massacre began with the slaughter of about 6,000 Jews in Nemirov. Other major mass murders occurred in Tulchin, Polonnoye, Volhynia, Bar, Lvov, etc. Jewish records estimate that a total of 100,000 Jews were murdered and 300 communities destroyed.
1806: A French Jesuit Priest, Abbe Barruel, had written a treatise blaming the Masonic Order for the French Revolution. He later issued a letter alleging that Jews, not the Masons were the guilty party. This triggered a belief in an international Jewish conspiracy in Germany, Poland and some other European countries later in the 19th century.
1819: During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, many European Jews lobbied their governments for emancipation. They sought citizenship as well as the same rights and treatment as were enjoyed by non-Jews. This appears to have provoked sporadic anti-semites to engage in anti-Jewish violence. Jews and their property were attacked first in Wuerzburg, Germany. The rioting spread across Germany and eventually reached as far as Denmark and Poland.
1846 - 1878: Pope Pius IX restored all of the previous restrictions against the Jews within the Vatican state. All Jews under Papal control were confined to Rome's ghetto - the last one in Europe until the Nazi era restored the church's practice. On September 3rd, 2000, Pope John Paul II beatified Pius IX; this is the last step before sainthood. He explained: "Beatifying a son of the church does not celebrate particular historic choices that he has made, but rather points him out for imitation and for veneration for his virtue."
1873: The term "antisemitism" is first used in a pamphlet by Wilhelm Marr called "Jewry's Victory over Teutonism."
1881: Alexander II of Russia was assassinated by radicals. The Jews were blamed. About 200 individual pogroms against the Jews followed. ("Pogrom" is a Russian word meaning "devastation" or "riot." In Russia, a pogrom was typically a mob riot against Jewish individuals, shops, homes or businesses. They were often supported and even organized by the government.) Thousands of Jews became homeless and impoverished.
1893: "...anti-Semitic parties won sixteen seats in the German Reichstag."
1894: Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an officer on the French general staff, was convicted of treason. The evidence against him consisted of a piece of paper from his wastebasket with another person's handwriting, and papers forged by antisemitic officers. He received a life sentence on Devil's Island, off the coast of South America. The French government was aware that a Major Esterhazy was actually guilty. 3 The church, government and army united to suppress the truth. Writer Emile Zola and politician Jean Jaur? fought for justice and human rights. After 10 years, the French government fell and Drefus was declared totally innocent.
1905: The Okhrana, the Russian secret police in the reign of Czar Nicholas II, converted an earlier antisemitic novel into a document called the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." It was published privately in 1897. A Russian Orthodox priest, Sergius Nilus, published them publicly in 1905. It was promoted as the record of "secret rabbinical conferences whose aim was to subjugate and exterminate the Christians." The Protocols were used by the Okhrana in a propaganda campaign that was associated with massacres of the Jews. These were the Czarist Pogroms of 1905.
1915: 600,000 Jews were forcibly moved from the western borders of Russia towards the interior. About 100,000 died of exposure or starvation.
1917: "In the civil war following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the reactionary White Armies made extensive use of the Protocols to incite widespread slaughters of Jews." 5 Two hundred thousand Jews were murdered in the Ukraine alone.
1920: The Protocols reach England and the United States. They are exposed as a forgery, but are widely circulated. Henry Ford sponsored a study of international activities of Jews. This led to a series of antisemitic articles in the Dearborn Independent, which were published in a book, "The International Jew." The Protocols were sold on Wal-Mart's online bookstore until they were removed on September 24th, 2004.
1920: The defeat of Germany in World War I and the continuing economic difficulties were blamed in that country on the "Jewish influence."
1920's, 1930's: Hitler had published in Mein Kampf in 1925, writing: "Today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." The Protocols are used by the Nazis to whip up public hatred of the Jews in the 1930's. Widespread pogroms occur in Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Rumania, and the USSR. Radio programs by many conservative American clergy, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, frequently attacked Jews. Reverend Fr. Charles E Coughlin was one of the best known. "In the 1930's, radio audiences heard him rail against the threat of Jews to America's economy and defend Hitler's treatment of Jews as justified in the fight against communism."
1936: Cardinal Hloud of Poland urged Catholics to boycott Jewish businesses.
1940: The Vichy government of France collaborated with Nazi Germany by freezing about 80,000 Jewish bank accounts. During the next four years, they deported about 76,000 Jews to Nazi death camps; only about 2,500 survived. It was only in 1995 that a French president, Jacques Chirac, "was able to admit that the state bore a heavy share of responsibility in the mass round-ups and deportations of Jews, as well as in the property and asset seizures that were carried out with the active help of the Vichy regime."
1941: The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC estimates that 13,000 Jews died on June 19th, 1941 during a pogrom in Bucharest, Romania. It was ordered by the pro-Nazi Romanian regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu. The current government has admitted that this atrocity happened, but most Romanians continue to deny that the Jews were killed on orders from their own government.
1941: Polish citizens in Jedwabne in northeastern Poland killed hundreds of Jews, by either beating them to death or burning them alive in a barn. According to the Associated Press: "The role played by Polish citizens was suppressed for nearly six decades until publication of a book by a Polish emigre historian, Jan Tomasz Gross. After release of the book in 2000, the Polish government launched an investigation. 'The role of the Poles was decisive in conducting the criminal act,' [prosecutor Radoslaw] Ignatiew, said. The book, 'Neighbours,' sparked national soul-searching among Poles, many of whom could not believe that anybody but the Nazis would have committed the atrocity."
Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/
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