This path was created by Anonymous.

This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

The Florida Holocaust Museum: History, Heritage and Hope Permanent Exhibition

Antisemitism

The roots of hatred are deeply entrenched in human history, especially the singular form of hatred known as antisemitism.

As you see on the linked timeline, antisemitism long precedes the Third Reich. Early Christian teachings associated Jews with a plague on society. Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern Europe, Jews were persecuted and a number of nations exiled them.

Entrenched antisemitism was one of the major factors that contributed to the Holocaust with the mass murder of millions of European Jews. As Adolf Hitler wrote in his autobiography Mein Kampf,

No one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil, as the symbol of all evil, assumed the living shape of the Jews.

In the decades after the Holocaust, antisemitism remains an ever-present force in many areas of the world.

Contents of this path:

Jews have lived in Europe for more than two thousand years. The American Jewish Yearbook placed the total Jewish population of Europe at about 9.5 million in 1933. This number represented more than 60 percent of the world's Jewish population, which was estimated at 15.3 million. Most European Jews resided in eastern Europe, with about 5 1/2 million Jews living in Poland and the Soviet Union. Before the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, Europe had a dynamic and highly developed Jewish culture. In little more than a decade, most of Europe would be conquered, occupied, or annexed by Nazi Germany and most European Jews--two out of every three--would be dead. - Holocaust Encyclopedia, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum