In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain. At the time, anti-Semitism ran rampant.
Jews became citizens in the French Revolution (though the general anti-religion sentiment during the Terror obviously made times tough); Napoleon laws creating a sort of mini-Jewish state in France, but also declared all debts to Jews annulled and other such discriminatory laws (in 1808).
Jewish situations across Europe differed in the nineteenth century; France was fairly tolerant, but in, say, most of what is now Italy Jews were confined to ghettos until around 1870. In the late nineteenth century, there are two developments: zionism (Herzl) but also the Dreyfus affair.
I need hardly dwell on the Holocaust, where approximately six million Jews were killed, but the twentieth century also saw the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. There are currently approximately 2 million Jews now living in Europe.
The most interesting aspect of anti-Semitism throughout European history is its transformation from a religious discrimination to a racial one. I'm not sure about this last part, but I believe that it happens some time around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth; the anti-Semitism of Wagner would have been dispelled had Jews converted to Christianity, but the anti-Semitism of Hitler was racial. It would make sense if this corresponded to the pseudo-scientific ideas that abounded about racial hierarchies and such around the turn of the century, but I have no evidence to support this.
Some sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Europe
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/France.html
and the textbook
No comments:
Post a Comment