Blood Libels During The Holocaust

Consistent with Rossel, Germany has had a past of anti-Semitism, starting in 1542 when the great German Protestant leader Martin Luther wrote a booklet called Against the Jews and Their Lies. Even earlier the Catholic Churches had taught that the Jewish people killed Crist and should therefore be hated (10). Early teachings of anti-Semitism lead to a hating of the Jewish community, but with the German’s calling themselves the “Aryan Race” and the Jewish people calling themselves the “chosen one’s” there was bound to be competition on who was superior.

     Throughout history the Jewish people have been scapegoats; whenever something was not going right they were the ones to blame. From Biblical times through to the Shakespearean Era, all the way to the Middle East Crisis and the creation of Israel, the Jews have been persecuted and blamed for the problems of the world. The most horrifying account of Jewish persecution is the holocaust, which took place in Europe from 1933 to 1945 when Adolf Hitler tried to eliminate all the people that he thought were inferior to the Germans, namely the Jews, because he wanted a pure Aryan State.

According to the late Uruguayan journalist, Eduardo Galeano, “History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.' This quote suggests that whatever happens in the past to people can come back to haunt them. In line with this quote, from Source E, “The Roots”, Barbara Rogasky explains, “...organized groups attacked defenseless Jewish communities, looted and destroyed them, and killed or maimed their inhabitants. Between 1900 and 1904, at least 50,000 Jewish lives were lost in such incidents” (Rogasky excerpt). Indeed, history repeated itself diabolically. The fatalities continued to extend all over Europe. The raiders were attempting to finish what they had started by killing 50,000 Jews. Earlier in the passage, “In the early years of Christianity, Jews were called Christ killers, murderers of [Jesus] … Jews were believed to murder Christians, especially innocent children … This was the infamous Blood Libel, which the Nazis made good use of again hundreds of years later” (Rogasky excerpt). Let's look and analyze further the quote that said Christians were believed to be murdered by Jews. The word “believed” raises the possibility that the ancestors of the Nazis could have themselves gone through racial discrimination by the Jews. As per Newton’s Law, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” So, this hatred of the Nazi predecessors may have

From 1941 to 1945, Jews were systematically murdered in one of the deadliest genocides in history, which was part of a broader aggregate of acts of oppression and killings of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by the Nazi regime. Every arm of Germany 's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics and the carrying out of the genocide. Other victims of Nazi crimes included Romanians, Ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah 's Witnesses and the mentally and physically disabled. A network of about 42,500 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territories were used to concentrate victims for slave labor, mass murder, and other human rights abuses. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators. Beginning in 1941, Jews from all over the continent, as well as hundreds of thousands of European Gypsies, were transported to the Polish ghettoes. Every person designated as a Jew in German territory was marked with a yellow star making them open targets. Thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the USSR. Since June 1941, experiments with mass killing methods had been ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz and many more. That August, 500 officials gassed 500 Soviet POWs to death with the pesticide Zyklon-B. The SS soon placed a huge order for the gas with a German pest-control firm, an ominous indicator of the coming Holocaust. Beginning in late 1941, the Germans

If one hates someone or something that means they have an intense dislike towards them. Sometimes this hate can be so large it can be an influence for mass destruction. We have learned, or even have seen examples of hate turning into something bigger throughout our history. These examples include the multiple wars, terrorist’s attacks, and genocides. Many of these incidents were drove by hate, and did not end well. What drives this hate? How can people turn on one another with just feeling hate towards them? The Holocaust being one of the many genocides in our history was indeed influenced by an intense dislike. That intense dislike was towards certain types of people it ended up taking multiple lives.

Jews played a crucial role in their communities in medieval Europe so the growth in anti-sematic action can be seen as unexpected. Whilst Jews had always been considered as ‘other’ by their Christian neighbour tolerance existed. So what caused the shift to viewing Jews as traitors? The causes for anti-Semitism during the Latin Middle Ages were sudden large events, the Crusades and the Black Death, and ongoing concerns, Jew’s economic position. The primary cause was the Crusades as the First Crusade began a tradition of organised violence against the Jewish population of Europe, rationalised as an extension of the Christian mission.

According to the text of the Old Testament, Jewish authorities treated Jesus and his followers with hostility. Many Christians to this day, even though it has been proven not to be true, believe that Jesus’ crucifixion was a direct result of the Jewish people. Christian antisemitism was born from a misconception by Jesus’ followers that was then eternalized by being written in their bible. Christian antisemitism would continue onward through the Crusades in which the persecution of the Jewish people reached an all-time high in Europe, where communities were destroyed, Jewish people were killed, and others were expelled from their lands. Many stereotypes for Jewish people arose from this period because they were restricted to specific “inferior” occupations by the Christian authorities such as tax collectors and moneylenders. This early on compulsory requirement to wear a yellow star began in certain parts of Europe.

Anti-Semitism as a term to describe hatred of Jews was not used until the second half of the nineteenth century, but a bias against Jews had existed for thousands of years. This resentment of the Jews as a people can be traced back to theological roots as well as practical concerns in early Europe. The most significant and accepted origin of anti-Judaism is the death of Jesus. Jews were branded as the murderers of Christ and Jesus’ followers developed a deep hatred of them. This undertone to Christianity endured over time and became an inherent facet of the religion. Later, when Jews attempted to assimilate into European societies, they faced strong discrimination and resistance. Other citizens viewed them as economic competition. In addition, negative stereotypes evolved about the Jews in relation to their

Growing up, people learn about the past of their own kind and of the world they live in. One reads history in books, hears history from parents, and studies history at schools. Knowing the history of one's ancestors allows one to understand the past and change for a better future. Significant battles, civil movements, and reformations teach people valuable lessons and help the society to improve. The Holocaust, one of the most well-known history events, represents a perfect historical example of discrimination and racism. However, a number of people started to deny the known facts of the Holocaust and even the event itself. Despite of what these people say and how convincing their reasons are, this piece of history is to be protected from

With all of the false stereotypes being relayed to the people, hate towards the Jews became normal. Kurt Mobius, a German police officer working at a concentration camp in Poland, said, “I believed the propaganda that all Jews were criminal and subhumans” (Marcovitz 18). The constant anti-Semitic distortion made it easy for

For thousands of years, the Jewish People have endured negative stereotypes such as the "insects of humanity." As Sander Gilman pointed out, the Nazi Party labeled Jews as "insects like lice and cockroaches, that generate general disgust among all humanity" (Gilman 80).1 These derogative stereotypes, although championed by the Nazis, have their origins many centuries earlier and have appeared throughout Western culture for thousands of years. This fierce anti-Semitism specifically surfaced in Europe’s large cities in the early twentieth century, partially in conjunction with the growing tide of nationalism, patriotism, and xenophobia that sparked the First World

The Holocaust is consider one of the biggest hate crime that the world has witness. It is a hate crime due to the fact that is directed toward a specific group of people. Individual chosen or group chosen because they represent a group believed to represent a group that the perpetrator is biased against. Everything started when Adolf Hitler became the leader of Germany, form 1934 to 1945. Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in 1889. Hitler rose to power in German politics becoming the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Part; known as the Nazi Party. As the dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945 he started WWII with the invention to Poland. Hitler was the orchestrated of the Holocaust, which resulted in the death of 6 million Jews. Hitler believes that Jews were an inferior race. According to Hitler Jews were an alien threat to German racial purity and community. “After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s “final solution”–now known as the Holocaust–came to fruition under the cover of world war, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland “ (History 2009). Hitler’s symbol used to murder millions of people was the swastika. The word "swastika" comes from the Sanskrit svastika - "su" meaning "good," "asti" meaning "to be," and "ka" as a suffix. Until the Nazis used this symbol, the swastika was used by many cultures throughout the past 3,000 years to represent life, sun, power,

“One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.”

Blood libel, in a broad sense, is the claim that Jews kill Christians in order to use their blood for ritual sacrifices. It stems from the idea that Jews were the ones who killed Jesus, and began to rise in popularity in the 12th century when Thomas of Monmouth published a story that William of Norwich had been murdered by Jews for an ancient Jewish ritual. According to Ocker, the quick spread of this accusation can be at least partially attributed to the environment in the Christian world at the time of the Second Crusade, leading to their readiness to believe that Jews murdered Christians as vengeance reminiscent of the killing of Christ. Waldman addresses this same phenomenon, citing medieval representations of Jews as satanic heretics. Both articles emphasize the Christian view that Jewish beliefs and practices should be held in stark opposition to their own, as a dark other associate with the

In order for a falsification to be created, there has to already exist some widespread story which the forgery can then be based on. This is where the relation between myths and falsifications appears – myths provide the narrative foundation for making a convincing falsification. The connection between myths and falsifications becomes evident when we consider anti-Semitism from later antiquity to the present day. Early Christianity in Europe often featured hatred towards the Jews, who were viewed as God-killers for having crucified Jesus Christ. Moreover, a myth about Jews kidnapping and murdering Christian children in order to use their blood for religious rituals was widely disseminated throughout the continent. During the Middle Ages, Jews were marginalized by the Christian society – they were forbidden to own land and were excluded from agriculture and crafting, which were the driving forces of the economy at