Anti-semetism

Jews have been on a continuous roller-coaster of being accepted and then being hated. Whenever Jews start to feel largely accepted and gain influence in society, someone perceives them to be a threat and widespread persecution resurfaces. The middle class people were afraid the Jews were going to gain power over the economy, and this is what brought about anti-Semitism to begin with. Other than the fact that people were afraid of the Jews, another reason for the persecution of Jews was the lack of knowledge. People were uneducated about Jews, and just believed whatever people told them. �

These persecutions throughout history led to Jews being unable to gain higher education, which in turn led to Jews being unable to get good jobs. The persecutions also greatly devastated the Jewish population. So many Jews were killed during the Holocaust that the Jewish population will never be as large as it once was. These persecutions led to the Zionist movement. In the 1800’s, Theodore Herzl came up with an idea to end anti-Semitism. “Herzl’s personal experiences of discrimination, convinced him that liberal politics and the institutions of the liberal state could not protect the Jews in Europe or insure that they would be treated justly. In 1896, Herzl published The Jewish State, in which he called for a separate state in which the Jews of the world might be assured of those rights and liberties that they should be enjoying in the liberal states of Europe.”

The most infamous persecution of the Jews occurred in the 1940’s in Germany in association with World War II. Millions of Jews were killed during this time. The Nazi party was held responsible for this persecution. When the economy in Germany started to fall apart, everyone was looking for a scapegoat. Adolf Hitler made it clear in his book Mein Kampf that he hated Jews and thought that they were the inferior race. He preyed on the fact that the Germans were looking for someone to blame for their struggles, and was able to convince the Nazi party and the Aryans that the Jews were to blame for the economic problems and were the inferior race. He persuaded the people to believe that the only way to make the economy better was to exterminate all the Jews. The movie Schindler’s List gives a very vivid view of anti-Semitism during this time period. This film is a look at how the Jews were treated in the 1940’s. At the beginning of the movie, the main character, Oskar Schindler, was a very mean and greedy man. He extorted the Jews for cheap labor, forcing them to work in his factory. Once Schindler realized what was happening to the Jews, he decided to turn his factory into a refuge for them. Schindler ended up saving over 1,000 Jews, keeping them out of the concentration camps and the gas chambers. This movie was very disturbing although it probably

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