anti-Semitism

anti-Semitism is not a concept on which there can be any general consensus. Its dictionary meaning, ‘hatred of Jews’, gives only limited guidance, since the term is used to refer to a very wide range of attitudes, from petty prejudice to genocide. Many Jewish authors maintain that anti-Semitism is a unique phenomenon, that the Final Solution during the Second World War was the culmination of 2,000 years of Christian anti-Semitism. Religious, political, economic, social, and racial categories of anti-Semitism are often distinguished. Other commentators, in contrast, would argue that anti-Semitism is just one variant of the racism and xenophobia that can be found among members of any community, including Jews. The racist anti-Semitism which was propagated in Nazi Germany is often set apart from the kind of recriminations against Jews which flourished alongside other similar intercommunal antagonisms, especially in the multi-ethnic societies of eastern Europe. More recently, anti-Semitism has been used to describe widespread prejudice in the western world against Arabs (who, like the Jews, are Semites).

Anti-Semitism of the most virulent racist type formed a central theme of Nazi ideology. In Mein Kampf, Hitler made numerous ugly references to the Jews as ‘parasites’ and ‘degenerates’ whose presence was supposedly poisoning the purity of German blood. He also identified Communism as a Jewish movement, giving the struggle against ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ the highest priority in his programme. Once in power the Nazis gave legal expression to their views. According to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, it was a criminal offence for Jews and non-Jews to marry or to have sexual intercourse. Jewishness was defined by kinship criteria within three generations, and was used to withdraw civil rights from all people coming within its purview. Jews were not the only group to be classed as Untermenschen or ‘sub-humans’, nor were they the only people to be murdered en masse, simply for what they were. But the so-called Final Solution of 1941–5 was certainly the largest single campaign of genocide which the Nazis put into execution.

It is relevant to note that Nazi anti-Semitism flourished in a country where the Jews represented less than 1% of the population and where they were highly assimilated into German culture. It would seem that the more extreme anti-Semitic fantasies thrived on the fact that the scapegoats were scarce. It is difficult to say how many Germans shared the Nazis' views and how many rejected them in private, but there were few public protests.

In Poland, where the Jewish community was ten times larger than in Germany and much less assimilated, racist anti-Semitism of the Nazi type was rare. Tensions between Jews and non-Jews had certainly been rising in the last years before the war, and they were to rise still further in 1939 when the Jews of eastern Poland were widely suspected of welcoming the Soviet invasion. The nationalist wing of public opinion had always been notoriously xenophobic, and the various religious and ethnic minorities had to suffer a tide of threats, jibes, and petty discrimination. Religious anti-Semitism involving the ancient ‘blood-libel’ was not uncommon. At the same time, pre-war Poland had granted far-reaching political and cultural autonomy to the Jewish kahals, or communes. Since the Middle Ages legal ghettos had disappeared, until their formation by the Nazis in 1939–40, and organized violence was at most sporadic. The SS located their death camps (see OPERATION REINHARD) in occupied Poland for the simple reason that the majority of the intended victims lived there: they could not count on any significant measure of support from a Polish population which was itself terrorized. In the period of segregation, a class of szmalcowniks or ‘greasers’ was used by the Gestapo to betray fugitive Jews for money. (The Gestapo had a similar practice of keeping Jewish informers alive on licence in order to report on the Polish underground.) Despite widespread apathy and complacency in Poland about the fate of the Jews, many individuals risked their lives in order to render assistance (see Zegota). The most eloquent commentary on Polish anti-Semitism is to be found at the Yad-Vashem Holocaust Memorial Centre in Jerusalem, where Polish names form the largest single group in the avenue of ‘the Righteous among Nations’.

Elsewhere in Europe the patterns of anti-Semitism were extremely varied. There was a strong dislike of Jews in many English upper-class and academic circles, and British attitudes were also coloured by the activities of Zionist terrorists in Palestine (see Irgun and Stern gang). France received a large influx of Jewish refugees in the period preceding the German occupation, and popular reactions were not always generous. French police in the occupied zone, like the Vichy authorities in the south, followed Nazi demands to round up Jews for deportation. Hitler's fascist allies in Italy were less enthusiastic, and Italy's Jewish community was largely left intact, though similar laws to the Nuremberg ones were passed in November 1938 (in the provisions for the Defence of the Italian Race). The Dutch also gained a good reputation, although only 20% of the Jews in the Netherlands survived. Hungary's Jews stayed in place as long as the Horthy regime was in power. In the brief German occupation of 1944–5, the Hungarian Arrow Cross (see Hungary, 3) collaborated willingly. But others, such as Wallenberg, made elaborate attempts to limit the deportations. Romania witnessed a wave of native pogroms in 1939–41, long before the Nazis arrived to finish the job more systematically. In the Baltic States, the Nazis recruited auxiliary units to assist in their work. In Ukraine, it was reported that civilians spontaneously joined in the murderous work of the Einsatzgruppen. In the Soviet Union, anti-Semitism was officially regarded as a vice exclusive to the fascist enemy, but in practice it was alive and growing. The Stalinist purges against the old Bolsheviks, many of whom were Jewish, had heightened the climate of suspicion; and no arrangements were made to evacuate Jews from areas threatened in 1941–2 by the Nazi advance. It is often said that a full-scale anti-Semitic purge was only prevented by Stalin's death in 1953.

In any fair analysis, however, collective guilt and stereotypes are to be avoided. Anti-Semitism could be found in most countries, while no nation could be collectively characterized as anti-Semitic. The climate of public opinion was usually set by political regimes, but individual reactions to that climate were often unpredictable.

Norman Davies