Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall Chapter 1

A Concise History of German Anti-Semitism

In 1942, in a suburb of Berlin known as Wannsee, Reinhard Heydrich (head

of the infamous Nazi secret police, the Gestapo) finalized the Nazi commitment to the

extermination of the within the Third Reich’s sphere of influence (Gilbert 281).

According to some historians, these announcements made at Wannsee were the culmination of step-by-step decisions that had brought about what meant

when, in 1920, he announced the Nazi party’s position that “None but members of the

Nation may be citizens of the State. None but those of German blood, whatever their

creed, may be members of the Nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the

Nation” (qtd. in Gilbert 23).

Both ancient and contemporary European and German anti-Semitic forces

were about to collide in Wannsee. That collision tragically ignited one of history’s

most devastating and most documented genocidal conflagrations—what today is

commonly called the “Holocaust.” Some historians suggest was the

result of the Nazi targeting of Jews as scapegoats by suggesting that world-Jewry

collectively had had something to do with the “stab in the back” that brought the

World War I German war effort and World War I itself to a turbulent end. Some

researchers suggest European Jewry was singled out for “special treatment” because

they, the Jews, were somehow responsible for the unexpectedly final battlefield-

failures, the consequent enormous war reparation payments, the collapsing stock

markets and the subsequent spiraling inflation that financially crippled the German

nation. Most historians, in fact, recognize that between 1918 and 1933 political and

74 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall economic factors were two of the most obvious reasons for Germany’s involvement in yet another world war. Another significant cause of the Holocaust, some critics argue, was the increasingly popular “Nationalist” movements that had become arisen throughout Europe. In post-war Germany, the National Socialist German Workers

Party (Nazi for short) had targeted Jews as a danger to German well-being. National purity was the central focus of much of Adolf Hitler’s writings and speeches, most of which included implicit and explicit threats against Jews in both Germany and

Austria, as well as threats against Jews around the world. Specifically, “[…] on 30

January 1939, the anniversary of his appointment as Reich Chancellor, he [Hitler] had made a chilling prophecy” (Noakes and Pridham 1049). While noting the world could not find peace until the was resolved, Hitler concluded:

[…] if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should

succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result

will not be the Bolshivizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the

annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. (qtd. in Noakes and Pridham 1049)

For this reason, among many others, the Second World War itself and the anti-Semitic genocide that took place behind German battlefield lines have become inextricably linked. As the popularity of the Nazi party increased, the years of Jews being considered Germans were coming to a close. What was to be announced at

Wannsee, horrifying as it was, was not, however, a wild, previously inconceivable leap into some unfathomably dark Nazi imagination. Instead, this announcement heralded, as historian Raul Hilberg suggests, but one more step in the historically ever-escalating efforts of nations and non-Jews to eliminate the Jews from their midst

75 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall (Shoah n.p.). So often had the Jews been targets of in the countries in which the Jews lived, anti-Semitism had become virtually ubiquitous throughout all of

Western and Eastern Europe long before the Nazis came to power. Historian, Franklin

Littell emphasizes this point by concisely noting, “The via dolorosa of the Jews did

not begin with the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler and the genocide of the Jews” (n.p.).

No doubt Littell would agree with Hilberg that Wannsee was but one more step along

an already much traveled road that had been coursed even in the pre-Christian world.

Step by step, anti-Semitic actions moved forward into what became the 20th century’s

pathway to the Nazi genocidal assault against European Jewry. This genocidal effort

took the lives of some 6,000,000 Jewish people, many of whom wound up in the

crematory fires of concentration and death camp ovens. The term Holocaust itself is

derived from the Greek holo-whole and caustus-burning or whole burning, a direct

reference to the crematory ovens and pits that were used to reduce these victims to

bone and ash that then could be dispersed, buried or otherwise disposed of.

Raul Hilberg’s suggestion that the Holocaust was the next, almost predictable,

step in the longstanding historical treatment of European Jewry has some support.

Actions against the Jews had progressed from mandating that they move from their

homes into , and later that Jews convert from Judaism to Christianity or be

expelled from their homelands, and finally, that Jews were to be annihilated. Hilberg

writes, “The second [conversion] appeared as an alternative to the first

[ghettoization], and the third [annihilation] emerged as an alternative to the second”

(7) [my brackets].

The earliest of historically noted anti-Semitic events reaches into the distant

76 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall past and includes, for instance, the enslavement of Jews by Nebuchadnezzar during the Babylonian captivity of 586 B.C. E. (New Advent 1). Then, according to historian

Yehuda Bauer, internal conflicts among the Jews led to the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 67-70 C.E (18), the oppression of Jews under a succession of Roman procurators, which was then followed by the Bar-Kochba uprising and massacre in

132-135 C.E. (19).

But the political disenfranchisement and the religious subordination of the

Jews seems to have reached its zenith with Emperor Constantine’s declaration of

Christianity as the official religion of Rome in the 4th century A. D. This decision at first appeared to totally alienate Roman Jewry. Yet, the decision, according to Baur, reflected only a temporary restraint of Jewish political and economic influence (10).

Still, this period reflects a glimpse of what was to re-emerge in its most virulent form

1500 years later. Except for Constantine’s legal sanctions against Jews, conversion during these pre- and early-Christian times does not seem to have been a goal.

Along with the rise of Christianity, Christians, as mentioned earlier, sought to convert, then to expel, and finally, in the uniforms of Nazi soldiers decorated with the infamous death’s head insignia, to annihilate the Jews within their reach.

As Christianity gained political influence and religious domination of Europe, the Church encouraged its followers to show Jews the error of their ways “[…] because of the conviction that it was the duty of true believers to save unbelievers from the doom of eternal hellfire” (Hilberg 5). But conversion went neither easily nor quickly. Some historians believed conversion did not go at all well. By 1200

C.E., “[…] the Church had converted to Christianity virtually all the inhabitants of

77 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall Europe […] (Fabry 1). Yet, “The Jews were not convinced” that conversion was the

best thing for them individually or as a people (6). Their reluctance to convert may

be somewhat better understood in light of fact that many of those Jews who had

converted had been received into the Christian fold with only the deepest of

skepticism. By the 15th century, in response to accusations of false conversions, these

early converts had been persecuted by denouncers. Those Jews who were accused

were most frequently sentenced to torture and to their deaths at the hands of Spanish inquisitors such as Torquemada, for fear that these conversos (Jews who had converted Christianity) were actually witches, heretics, and, in fact, never really converted at all but had instead only heretically feigned to have converted.

Denouncement of converses became accepted practice throughout the 15th century

Spanish inquisition, including denouncements for such actions as a person’s not

eating pork or “smiling at the mention of the Virgin Mary […]” (Fbrey 5).

However, determining if any Jew’s conversion was real or whether it was

merely a ruse to escape the occupational and social anti-Semitic of

the times was so difficult that Spain began requiring certified purity of faith. The

Spanish government and church officials began classifying and certifying converts by

the degrees of “’half-new Christians,’ ‘quarter-new Christians,’ and so on” (Hilberg

6). (Ascertaining the degree of a Jew’s Christianization, underscored the belief that

converted Jews were not full Christians and would always be to some degree a Jew.

This anti-Semitic suspicion moved Jews one step closer to Wannsee, where Reinhard

Heydrich, head of the Nazi secret police, established a similar standard that would fix

the degree to which a German was a Jew based on the lineage of one or both parents

78 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall or even whether one acted like a Jew.

Conversion of the Jews in 15th Europe was not working. When this became

apparent, expulsion became the second step in developing a national anti-Jewish

policy (7). The move from conversion to national expulsion was one more step closer

still to Wannsee. In essence the political policy had shifted: from “Jews cannot live

among us as Jews to Jews cannot live among us. In 1492, for instance, all Spanish

(Sephardic) Jews who refused to convert were expelled from Spain. They made their

separate and collective ways into Northern and Eastern Europe (Fabry 5). Indeed,

this northern and eastern migration had begun around 1209 as other nations began

years of evangelization until in 1492, when Jews had been expelled from England,

France, Austria, and Spain (Grobman 4). As indicated in the tables appended to the

end of this chapter, the expulsions took on more forms than physical expulsion from

Jews’ host countries. Even within their host countries, the respective governments

had begun prohibiting of Jews from cohabiting with Christians, excluding Jews from professional employment and ejecting Jews from public schools, practices that later

became all too familiar. In these ways, Jews were effectively expelled from all social

and economic intercourse with their Christian or other non-Jewish neighbors.

While some Jews struggled to assimilate into Central and Western European countries throughout the 11th to 15th centuries, other Jews, such as Germanic Jews and

the Ashkenazim (Yiddish speaking Jews), had made their way to the Rhine Valley as

early as the 9th Century.

These Germanic Jews seemed to fare no better than did their Mediterranean

co-religionists. Anti-Semitism in the Germanic north was as brutal as it later become

79 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall in Spain in 1492. From out of this Bavarian territory arose the anti-Semitic, Medieval

Crusades of 1096 A.D. Crusaders do not seem to have cared at all about evangelizing

or converting Jews to Christianity; nor did these Crusaders content themselves with

expelling Jews from their host countries. The First Crusade, for instance, according to

Salo W. Baron, culminated in a “trail of blood and smoldering ruins left behind in the

Jewish communities from France to Palestine” […], which […] “for the first time

brought home to the Jewish people, its foes and friends, the utter instability of the

Jewish position in the western world” (qtd. in Fischer 13). The slaughter of Jewish

people did not occur in isolation in the Middle East, but ranged from Germany, through France and throughout the rest of Europe.

Yet, these crusaders had been admonished not to kill Jews, for murder was a

violation of the Christian commandments. Indeed, not all Crusaders joined Crusades

to slay the infidel, the Semite; some Crusaders went along because participation

promised each Crusader a “plenary indulgence—that is, a full remission of all

penalties either in purgatory or on earth previously due any sinner” (Eban 155), and,

admonished or not, in 1098, at Worms, during two days of apparent carnage, the local

[non-Jewish] population had killed 800 Jews (Rossel 61). The Crusades recurred in

1147 and went on until 1149. Hunting down the infidel and seeking indulgences had

become generational, and yet another Crusade began in 1189 and continued through

1192. While the Crusades were initially begun to expel the infidel from the Holy

lands, Palestine, Syria, and the Mediterranean in toto, the historian Abba Eban notes,

“The Crusades had no single motive: a convergence of political, economic social, and

religious factors produced this historical upheaval” (155). It is impossible to

80 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall determine, with any degree of certainty, whether the Crusaders’ desire to reclaim the

Holy land, or their desire to increase the Church’s land holdings, or their desire for private wealth and religious indulgences had led to the expulsion of the Jews from their homes and their homelands in the targeted areas. Much of the Crusades, Eban suggests, ultimately ended in the massacres of more local Jews than Jews in the Holy land. These more-local attacks resulted in 800 Jewish deaths at Worms and another

5000 at Mainz (156). In Spain, in Germany and in Austria, wherever the Jews settled, anti-Semitism must have seemed endemic.

“By 1500,” according to Klaus P. Fischer, in his very thorough history of anti-

Semitism, History of an Obsession, “all of Western Europe, with the exception of a few areas in Germany and Austria, was free of Jews” (37). Both in and outside of

Germany, Jews continued to be the targets of Nationalist and religious zealotry because they were the outsiders; they were different.

According to historian Yehuda Bauer, the Jews also felt they were different, and as God’s chosen people, they had been “chosen to be different” (17) in the most meaningful of contexts. Speaking a foreign tongue (Yiddish), living, for the most part, in exclusively Jewish enclaves, practicing non-Christian rituals and dressing according to their own distinct customs, Jews appeared “different.” This separateness from their neighbors made Jews vulnerable to allegations that included the Passover- ritual child-murder known as the “.” Accusations of this sort arose in

France in 1171 and in Spain in 1247 (Eban 166-67) and added to the perception of

Jews as outsiders, religiously and ritualistically separate from the communities in which they resided. In Germany, as within most European communities, when these

81 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall accusations of ritualistic murder proved false, no announcements of innocence were

publicly reported, and neither were those who had made such false allegations nor

those who had committed such criminal and/or homicidal acts against the Jews

punished. Not punishing non-Jewish perpetrators of crimes against Jews served

socially, religiously and legally to further isolate the Jews. This passive sanction of such anti-Jewish acts led once again to expulsion, if not from their homes, then from the normal intercourse in the lives of their non-Jewish neighbors.

These age-old and seldom substantiated accusations against the Jews have continued because of the belief that Jews who do such things are irrational and, therefore, not subject to rational consideration. Fischer, noting an inherent connection between history and psychology, argues this irrational perpetuation of the negative image of Jews was/is “delusional” (17). Fischer seems to believe that there is no separating the history of anti-Semitism from the psycho-social phenomenon he calls Judeophobia (3). Whatever the reason, Germanic Jews throughout the Middle

Ages were expelled from political, economic and social interaction and, later, were even separated from their national identity altogether. More and more these “others,” these “outsiders,” simply became “the Jews.” In fact, Fischer suggests that Western

Europeans had so used the Jews as scapegoats that European culture as a whole actually labored under several anti-Semitic “delusions” (3) such as:

• The stubbornness of the Jews

[1800 years of refusal to convert to Christianity (30)]

• The Wandering Jew (Ahasuerus)

[A mythical Jew who mocked Christ at his crucifixion and was

82 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall condemned to wander the earth (30)]

• The Jews were in league with the devil

[Jews represented as pigs with devil—see image above (31)]

• The Mephitic smell of the Jews

[Devil gave off a foul smell so Jews must smell foul (31)]

• Jewish carnality

[Jews considered overly sexual, evidenced by organ discoloration

(32)]

• Blood libel and ritual child murder

[Jewish males believed to menstruate because of circumcision and

consequently need blood of young children to become “potent” (33)]

•

[Torturing the transubstantiated body of Christ by profaning host wafers (33)]

• A Jewish world conspiracy

[World conspiracy of Jews to control the world—premise of the Elders of Zion text (33)]

• Well poisoning

[During plague years 1315, Jews are accused of poisoning or having well-water poisoned (34)]

• The unproductive Jewish parasite

[Accusation of Jews living off the profits of usury—taking a profit and

not giving back (36)]

83 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall In opposition to these false and negative stereotypes, as Fischer goes on to

note, historically strong ties bound Jews and Germans together, so closely together, in

fact, that the subsequent friction and explosion may have been neither altogether

unexpected nor altogether inexplicable. For instance, Fischer points out that while the

structures of German and Jewish beliefs were comfortably similar, the content was all

opposition. He argues that both cultures were inclined to follow instruction: the Jews

following their ancient religious traditions as they relocated throughout Western and

then Eastern Europe, and the Germans, having long existed as an aristocratically

dominated and territorially fragmented nation, were “habituated to the strictest sense

of obedience [...]” (56). Also, both Jews and Germans were in search of a national

identity: the Jews since their expulsion from Jerusalem and captivity in Babylon in

586 B.C., and the Germans since Prussia, Bavaria and the other provinces proved

unable “[…] to forge a common national identity” (56).

Fischer further asserts that both Jews and Germans believed that adherence to their native values was an expression of faith in their gods and ways of life. While

these two peoples appear to have had much in common, their goals were mutually

exclusive, in diametric and fatal opposition to one another (56). For the Germans, the

move to nationalism was for God and country; for the Jews, the move to Germany

was also for God and country. But, these were very different gods and two very

different peoples with very different visions of their respective roles in “their

country”: one native to the land, the Volk, and the other, the foreigner, the “outsider”

(Rossel 57). Thus, as Yehuda Bauer argues, the Jews, historically, had perhaps been

singled out because they were different–special–chosen (at least in their own eyes)–in

84 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall that they were perhaps– “chosen to be different”(17). But, for many Germans, as for

many earlier Europeans, as Fischer points out, many non-Jews interpreted this Jewish

sense of being different or chosen as an implied superiority, regardless of Jewish

protestations that this had not been the case (22). Subsequently, Jews have been seen

as a people among other peoples, a people with no national homeland, and a people

with seemingly no other allegiances than those they held to each other, Jew to Jew.

Fifteenth century German anti-Semitic

sentiments found expression in illustrations such

as the infamous “Frankfurt Jew.” The top image

is a representation of the bloodletting of a child

in a “blood libel” and is an intentional reference

to the continuing allegations that Jews used the

blood of Christian children for the ritualistic

baking of Passover bread (matzot). The child is pinioned to an altar, and his blood is to be siphoned off and then baked into the bread. The (Figure 1) lower image includes a coprophagous Jew (identifiable by the rotella [the circle] on his cloak) and another Jew suckling at the teat of the boar/pig. Behind the animal is also the horned Satan or the devil.

Another such German anti-Semitic image is that of a transfer of authority

between Synagoga (the matron of the Old Testament—the Torah and the Jews) and

Ecclesia (matron of the New Testament— Christian Bible and the Christian church).

This image below can be read from right to left. At the left hand of Christ is

85 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall Synagoga; she holds a goat (a demonic symbol) with her left hand; her staff is broken at the top; her crown is falling to the ground; her eyes are blindfolded and her overturned chalice spills Christ’s blood. In apposition, Ecclesia stands at the right hand of Christ; she wears her crown; her staff is unbroken, her chalice collects

Christ’s blood. The message is rather clear: Synagoga is out, the defamed dame of the church; she has lost her way and is being led away from the church by an incarnation of the devil. Ecclesia, at the Right hand has replaced Synagoga and is on Christ’s good (Figure 2) side. She is now the maiden of the Christian church.

Too numerous to count, such images as these during the Middle Ages were to be found throughout Germany (Shreckenberg). However, not all anti-Semitic expressions were visual.

In 16th century Germany, other anti-Semitic comments are clearly heard in the vituperative exclamations of the popular critic of the Catholic Church, Martin Luther, who in 1543 suggests an eight-step solution to the “the Jewish question.” In his treatise “The Jews and their Lies,” Luther’s conflicted view of Jews is quite evident.

86 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall He writes:

First, their synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not

burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be

able to see a cinder or stone of it. Secondly, their homes should likewise be

broken down and destroyed … They ought to be put under one roof or in a

stable, like gypsies…. Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer books

and Talmuds…. Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death

to teach any more.... If, however, we are afraid that they might harm us

personally, then let us apply the same cleverness (expulsion) as the other

nations, such as France, Spain, Bohemia, etc. and settle with them for that

which they have extorted usuriously from us, and after having divided it up

fairly let us drive them out of the country for all time. (qtd. in Bauer 33)

Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished

completely for the Jews. For they have business in the countryside, since they

are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay home […]. (qtd.

in Halsall 6)

Such images as the “Frankfurt Jew” and statements similar to Martin Luther’s sounded, and then were understood to be, clearly anti-Jewish/anti-Semitic in the 14th,

15th and 16th centuries; they sound no less anti-Jewish/anti-Semitic in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries (Almog 1).

From the Crusades to woodblock illustrations to Luther, anti-Semitism

becomes almost ubiquitous in and synonymous with the Germanic territories from the

11th centuries on. Why would such a terrorized people stay in Germany, where during

87 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall the 19th and 20th centuries, according to Ian Kershaw, anti-Semitism was “so

commonplace as to go practically unnoticed”? (qtd. in Goldhagen 32). Klaus Fischer

answers, that for the hundred years prior to the rise of the Nazi party and the

institutionalized anti-Semitism of the Third Reich, Jews in Germany had slowly, but rather constantly, gained significant promises of freedoms that were denied Jews in other countries (42). The years of expulsion had to come to an end, finally, and at long last--or so it seemed.

Once permitted, Jews were noticeably successful at assimilating into 18th and

19th century German society, culture, economy and the professions. For instance,

during the 18th century, Moses Mendelssohn, once simply identified as a Jew, rose to

enough political prominence that it was he who emphasized to the King of Prussia,

Frederick II, the value of an indigenous German culture. Moreover, Doris Lessing

wrote plays about tolerance and social open-mindedness (Fischer 58). And, historian

Peter Pulzer points out that throughout the decade of 1887-1897, of those who studied

in Prussian universities there were “33 Catholics, 58 Protestants, and 519 Jews” (12).

Rising populations, emancipation, and, Pulzer goes on to suggest, Jewish talent

“blossomed”(13). But perhaps the most successful and subsequently the most

suspicious and envied Jewish success story was that of the Rothschild family whose

five male children became internationally famous multi-national, “cosmopolitan,”

bankers; a Jewish father and five sons controlling banks in Frankfurt, Paris, London,

Naples, and Vienna, respectively (43). Their success is still legendary; however, in

the early 19th century, this success was just what anti-Semites could point to as the

epitome of Jewish contrivance, exploitation and internationalism. Soon, the anti-

88 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall Semites had written proof that the Jews were out to control the world.

Ironically, those freedoms that had led to such financial, academic, professional and political success, then fatally led to Hitler, for, as Benjamin Segel points out, “Antisemites [sic] were quick to relate the prosperity of the Jews to their emancipation [...]. It granted not mere equality but also the power to dominate” (10).

In this regard, one such noted step toward Wannsee is Adolf Hitler’s having been made familiar with Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a text that is disparagingly known as “one of the most important forgeries of modern times” (3).

The Protocols, most historians agree, is essentially a total reconstruction of a work originally written by Maurice Joli some time around 1865. The work was originally titled the Dialogues in Hell between Machiavelli and Monstesquieu and was intended as a criticism of Napoleon through the polemicists who veritably argue over the inherent good and/or evil in man and the ruling of men. Some time later, however, so some critics argue, the work was renamed. In the introduction to Benjamin Segel’s A

Lie and A Libel, Richard Levy, notes, that through rewriting and re-focusing the work, the Protocols became “[...] the most lurid description of the Jewish world conspiracy” and that “the Protocols contributed to the sacrifice of the Jews” (qtd. in

Segel 10).

Segel describes the discovery and effect of the work in the following passage:

By pretending that the book was of Jewish authorship, an “authentic”

[his quotes] document that had luckily fallen into the hands of the intended

victims of Jewish plotting [. . .] . The Protocols appeared to the public to be

the unguarded revelation of the secret leaders of Jewry, the terrifying

89 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall blueprint for world conquest, and the uncanny fulfillment of ancient

prophecies. It was to be the wakeup call that would finally persuade apathetic

readers of the Jewish peril. (11)

As a seemingly candid disclosure, the Protocols notes, “These world-controlling Jews

at the top of affairs [...] are there by virtue of [...] qualities which are inherent in their

Jewish natures” (Marsden 14). One can easily imagine how this seemed to reinforce the common notion that being “different” meant to the Jews that Jews were superior.

The work goes on to declare that “the Protocols do not contemplate the extermination of the Gentiles, nor the making of this world a completely Jewish populated world.

The Protocols contemplate a Gentile world ruled by Jews” (43). The work also declares that this new-world order will be achieved by “a pretended effort to serve the working classes and promote great economic principles, for which an active propaganda will be carried on through our economic theories” [sic]. But, perhaps no comment in the Protocols is as threatening as what is written in “Protocol VI.” One passage reads: “We must develop by every means the importance of our super- government, representing it as the protector and benefactor of all who voluntarily submit to us” (41).

The tone of the language is so matter-of-fact that a reader gets the sense of listening in at this secret meeting. Given the history of anti-Semitism in general, and

German anti-Semitism in particular, there can be little doubt that this work seemed to confirm all those historic and current “delusions” (Fischer 24), all those suspicions, all those centuries of negative propaganda about Jews. After all, there it was in The

Protocols, in writing, in black and white. That Hitler arrived at similar conclusions

90 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall seems clearly implied in Levy’s transcription of an excerpt from a discussion between

Hitler and an unidentified confidant. In this discussion, Hitler is recorded to have said, “In those [early] days [of our movement] I read the Protocols of the Elders of

Zion–I was really shocked [...]. The perilous stealth of the enemy, and his omnipresence! I saw at once that we would have to imitate this–in our own way, of course” (qtd. in Segel 29). Adolf Hitler’s coming into contact with the Protocols was one more step toward Wannsee.

Hitler seems to have found in the Protocols just what Karl Lueger, the mayor, sometimes referred to as “the King” of Vienna, and the Austrian founder of The Anti-

Semitic League, loudly and constantly denounced the evil influences of Jews on the people around them and the societies in which Jews had settled.

Anti-Semitism’s re-emergence in the early Middle Ages and its genocidal transformation in the early 20th century chronicle a long Germanic history of sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant anti-Jewish expressions. With the exception of the politically and economically disguised religious efforts of the Crusades,

German anti-Semitism, as Raul Hilberg suggests, does seem to follow a certain progression. First, he explains, came the historically futile efforts to convert Jews, as evidenced in medieval Spain and in Luther’s exhortations. Then, arose the more successful efforts to expel the Jews from the social, cultural, economic and national life of the nations in Western Europe in which Jews had been accommodated and into which they had tried to assimilate. But, then, as finally as it was fatal, the Nazis took the next “’defensive’” (6) step.

And so it came, when on 20 January1942, in a small suburb of Berlin known

91 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall as Wannsee, Reinhard Heydrich announced the final “solution to the Jewish

question.” There were to be no conversions, no more expulsions, only annihilation.

Gassing. The total extermination of European Jewry.

The following lists include a chronology of German anti-Semitism and a comparison of pre-Nazi and Nazi anti-Semitic actions. These lists illustrate that, as

Hilberg suggests, anti-Semitism was not new.

A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF ANTI-SEMITISM

“Anti-Semitism,” Keter Publishing House,

Jerusalem, 1974, ISBN 0 7065-1327 4

CHRONOLOGY

1012 A.D. Emperor Henry II of Germany expels Jews from Mainz, the beginning

of persecutions against Jews in Germany.

1096-99 First Crusade. Crusaders massacre the Jews of the Rhineland (1096).

1146 Anti-Jewish riots in Rhineland by the Crusaders of second Crusade.

1215 Fourth Lateran Council introduces the Jewish Badge.

1235 Blood libel at Fulda, Germany.

1298-99 Massacre of thousands of Jews in 146 localities in southern

and central Germany led by the German knight Rindfleisch.

1336-39 Persecutions against Jews in Franconia and Alsace led by lawless

German bands, the Armleder.

1348-50 Massacres which spread throughout Spain, France,

Germany and Austria, as a result of accusations that the Jews had

92 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall caused the death of Christians by poisoning wells and other water

sources.

1399 Blood libel in Poznan.

1421 Persecutions of Jews in Vienna and its environs, confiscation of their

possessions, and conversion of Jewish children, 270 Jews burnt at

stake, known as the Wiener Gesera (Vienna Edict). Expulsion of Jews

from Austria.

1452-3 John of Capistrano, Italian Franciscan friar, incites persecutions and

expulsions of Jews from cities in Germany [sic]

1510 Expulsion of Jews from Brandenburg (Germany).

1544 Martin Luther, German religious reformer, attacks the Jews with

extreme virulence.

1551 Expulsion of Jews from Bavaria.

1614 Vincent Fettmilch, anti-Jewish guild leader in Frankfurt, Germany,

attacks with his followers the Jews of the Town and forces them to

leave the city.

1819 A series of anti-Jewish riots in Germany that spread to several

neighboring countries (Denmark, Poland, Latvia, and Bohemia) known

as Hep! Hep! Riots, from the derogatory rallying cry against the Jews

in Germany .

1840 Blood libel in Damascus (The )

1853 Blood libel in Saratov Russsia

1878 Adolf Stoecker, German anti-Semitic preacher and politician, founds

93 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall the Social Workers’ Party, which marks the beginning of the political

anti-Semitic movement in Germany.

1879 Heinrich von Treitschke, German historian and politician, justifies the

anti-Semitic campaigns in Germany, bringing anti-Semitism into

learned circles.

1879 Wilhelm Marr, German agitator, coins the term anti-Semitism.

1882 First International Anti-Jewish Congress convened at Dresden,

Germany.

1884 Expulsion of about 10,000 Russian Jews, refugees of 1881-1885

pogroms, from Germany.

1891 Blood libel in Xantan, Germany.

1899 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, racist and anti-Semitic author,

publishes his Die Grundlagen des 19 Jahrhunderts which became a

basis of National-Socialist ideology.

1905 First Russian public edition of the Protocols of the Elders

of Zion appears.

1917-21 Pogroms in the Ukraine and Poland. 1) Pogroms by retreating Red

Army from the Ukraine (spring, 1918), before the German army. 2)

Pogroms by the retreating Ukrainian army under the command of

Simon Petlyura, resulting in the deaths of over 8,000 Jews. 3)

Pogroms by the counter revolutionary “White Army” under the

command of General A.I. Denikin (fall, 1919) in which about 1,500

Jews were killed. 4) Pogroms by the “White Army” in Siberia and

94 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall Mongolia (1919). 5) Pogroms by anti-Soviet bands in the Ukraine

(1920-21), in which thousands of Jews were killed.

1920 Adolf Hitler becomes Fuehrer, of the National-Socialistische Deutsche

Arbeiterpartei (NASDAP), later known as National Socialist [party].

1920 I begins a series of anti-Semitic articles based on the

Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in .

1925-27 Adolf Hitler’s is published.

1933 Adolf Hitler appointed chancellor of Germany. Anti-Jewish economic

boycott: first concentration camps (Dachau, Oranienburg, Esterwegen,

Sachsenburg.

1935 introduced.

1938 After Anschluss, pogroms in Vienna, anti-Jewish legislation

introduced: deportations to camps in Austria andGermany.

1938 , Nazi anti-Jewish outrage in Germany and Austria (Nov.

9-10, 1938); Jewish businesses attacked, synagogues burnt, Jews sent

to concentration camps.

1940 Formation of ghettos in Poland; mass shootings of Jews: Auschwitz

camp, later an extermination camp is established; Western European

Jews under Nazis.

1941 Belzec extermination camp is established.

1941 Germany invades Russia and the Baltic states. Majdanek

extermination camp established. Chelmno and Treblinka

extermination camps are established. Anti-Jewish laws in Slovakia.

95 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall Pogroms in Jassy, Rumania. Pogroms and massacres by the

Einsatzgruppen and native population in Baltic states and the part of

Russia occupied by Germany. Expulsion of Jews from the German

Reich to Poland. Beginning of deportation and murder of Jews in

France.

1941 Severe riots against Jews in Iraq in consequence of Rashid Ali al-

Jilani’s coup d’etat. Nazi Germany introduces gassing in

extermination camps.

1942 Conference in Wannsee, Berlin, to carry out the “Final Solution” (Jan.

20, 1942). Beginning of mass transports of Jews of Belgium and

Holland toAuschwitz. Massacres in occupied Russia continue. Death

camps of Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka begin to function at full

capacity: transports from ghettos to death camps. Sobibor

extermination camp established.

1943 Germany declared Judenrein. Transports of Jews from all over Europe

to death camps. Final liquidation of the Warsaw (May, 16,

1943).

Obviously, as the twentieth century moved forward, so did German anti-

Semitism, and while the Jews may have remained “different,” their treatment at the hands of the Nazis was not altogether different from what Jews had been forced to suffer at the hands of earlier persecutors.

There was, prior to the rise of Nazi party, as this chapter points out, a long history of anti-Semitism in Germany. What is to be learned here is that there is

96 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall nothing new about racial prejudice. What we learn from anti-Semitism is that to avoid

being swept up in such expressions or outbursts or “upheavals” (Eban 155) of such

prejudices, we must remain constantly vigilant to protect the value of difference and

diversity, to practice inclusion rather than exclusion. Mankind must make every effort

to protect the weakest among us, for they are the most vulnerable to political, social, economic and “delusional” demonizing, to the peril of the rest of mankind.

From prohibition of sexual intercourse, to special taxes for their care and safeguarding,

to the confiscation of Jewish property and even imprisonment, German anti-Semitism

seems to have followed the trail of historical anti-Semitic practices, until in 1942 when

the Nazi party broke with history and at Wannssee announced that genocide was Nazi

party’s official Final Solution to the Jewish question. How did so many people misread

these writings on the wall?

Suggested exercises

1. Have students identify a related historical event that is not directly or thoroughly addressed in this writing. Students should identify the event, provide the appropriate historical context of the event, and discuss whether or not the event would have affected his or her reading of this historical summary.

2. Have students identify a related image and discuss what the image depicts and in what way(s) the image adds to or detracts from what is addressed in this historical summary.

97 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall Summary Notes

History of German Anti-Semitism

I. Significant People/Events

II. Outcomes of Events

III. Memorable Textual/Visual Expressions

IV. Language: Interesting/Foreign/Event-specific

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Fischer, Klaus, P. The History of an Obsession: German Judeophobia and the

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Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust. New York: Holt. 1986.

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Meier,1985.

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1945)”Journal of Church & State. Autumn, 99.

Marsden, Victor E. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Boring: CPA Book

99 Chapter 1 Writings on the Wall Publishers, 1934.

“Medieval Sourcebook: Martin Luther (1483-1546): The Jews and Their Lies,

excerpts.” Medieval Source Book. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO 17 April

2002.

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.

Noakes J. and G. Pridham eds. Naziism 1919-1945: A Documentary Reader. Great

Britain: University of Exeter Press, 1988.

Pulzer, Peter. The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in German and Austria.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Segel, Benjamin. A Lie and A Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of

Zion. Trans. 1995. University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

Schreckenberg, Heinz. The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History. New York:

Continuum Publishing Co., 1996.

“WARNING: This is a Notorious Antisemitic Document.” On the Jews and Their

Lies, 1543. Trans. Martin H. Bertram. (no publication date) Academic Search

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Illustrations

1. . “The Frankfurt .” From Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art. New York: Continuum. 335.

2. ---. “Man of Sorrows with Ecclesia and Synagoga,” From Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art. New York: Continuum.60.

101