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Anti-Semitism:
What is it and how did it begin?
Holocaust PowerPoint # 1
Prejudice against Jews
Pope Alexander III, who
presided over the third
Lateran Council in 1179
• Began way before the Holocaust
• Lateran Councils (1179—1215)
put restrictions on all nonCatholics
– Required to wear yellow
badges
– Supposed to live a part from
Christians
– Forced to listen to sermons
– Books were censored
Prejudice Continued
• England
– King Edward I seized the
possessions of 16,000 Jews
and expelled them
• France
– King Philip robbed his Jewish
subjects
• Germany
– Jews sought help here, but
not protected. They went to
Poland or Italy
King Edward I
19th Century
• France
– Napoleon’s armies marched across Europe
– He asked for Jews to become part of French civilization
• Austria
– Really bad for Jews here
– Queen Maria Theresa (1760)
• Required all unbearded Jews to wear yellow badge
• Not allowed to buy vegetables until 9 a.m., or cattle before 11 a.m.
• Taxed 3 million florins each year for ten years to live in Austria
– Joseph II
• Abolished the tax
• Let Jews attend schools
• Serve in the army
– Francis II
• Put Maria Theresa’s restrictions back in place
• 1867 all rules removed
Russia
• 1790s
– had the largest Jewish population
– Jews denied the right to attend universities and become officers in the
army
• 1791
– Jews forced to live in lands called “The Pale of Settlement”
– Pogroms were started to relieve public unrest
• A time when mobs attacked Jews or stole their property without
punishment
• 1882
- Czar Alexander III
wanted Jews either exiled,
converted, or killed
Germany
• Jews became isolated
– Could not speak or write in German
– Moses Mendelssohn
• Brilliant Jewish scholar
• Translated Torah into German
so Jews could learn the language
– Jewish restrictions lifted in 1870
– Gentile (non-Jewish) community reacted
Moses Mendelssohn
• Jew was only “slightly” different and mostly accepted
• “Anti-Semites” saw Jews as a threat
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Used medieval accusations to support their theories
Jews were Christ-killers
Drew blood from Gentile children
Plotted against Gentiles
Looked to race theories to prove inferiority
Anti-Semitism
• Was first used in 19th century by Walter
Marr, a German
• Used to mean “hatred of Jews and Judaism”
• Misused—
– Semitic actually refers to a group of languages
(Arabic, Aramaic, Amharic, and Hebrew)
– Because Jews speak Hebrew, it somehow came to
mean “anti-Jewish”
– Semite is any member of ancient and modern
peoples speaking any of the Semitic languages
Race or Religion?
• In reaction to anti-Semitism based on race,
many Jews insisted that Judaism was a
religion.
• Stated they were as French, Russian, or
German as any other citizen
• Jews were blamed for Germany’s defeat in
WW I, even though they fought bravely for
their country.
• Anti-Semitism later became the Nazi Party
policy