Short-term and Immediate Background of the
Holocaust
Enlightenment
ideas:
Reason
Progress
Science
Natural rights (life, liberty, property)
Tolerance
Universalism
What do you
think this means? -- Probably having
to do with everyone, or all events tie in together and affect everyone.
Cosmopolitan spirit
What about
this? -- I think it’s not too
different from universalism. No,
it’s not – cosmopolitanism is like being at home anywhere.
Voltaire: antisemitism not religiously based (secular)
Anti-Jewish diatribes
Wanted to crush Catholic Church
Enlightenment
thinkers saw organized religion (Christianity) as their main enemy
Revelation is unreasonable, irrational
Can revelation
be proven? For example, you may hear
voices in your head, but can I hear those voices in your head? -- No, but throughout history people have
followed leaders who claimed to hear or understand things no one else
could. Buddha, Mohammad, Moses, Jesus…
Judaism is the root of Christianity
How do you kill
a dandelion? -- You have to get the
root; just pulling off the top or the stem doesn’t do anything because it grows
back.
Believed in deism
God as a clock-maker
Many of our
Founding Fathers were deists. What is
the analogy all about? -- In the old
days, you had to wind a clock or watch, and then it would run all day. So God created everything, but He doesn’t
interfere with it, nor can He be counted on to help out in any way.
Writers looked back to pagan works for inspiration
French
Revolution: liberty, equality,
fraternity
USA was first modern nation to protect the Jews under a
constitution
Fraternity = nationalism
Refuted sectarianism, sectionalism
Encouraged Jewish emancipation and incorporation
By
end of 1700’s, Jews in Europe had gained citizenship
“To the Jew as an individual, everything; to the Jew as a
nation, nothing.”
How about
this? -- The Jews had always
segregated themselves. Even though
there was a ghetto movement (?) at times, Jews still stayed apart. And why? Where does that attitude come from? -- I guess it goes back to Mt. Sinai, like we talked
about. Because the Jews were God’s
Chosen People, that meant that everyone else was not. So the Jews separated themselves from inferior peoples. Jews don’t evangelize, so it’s not important
to them to mix with others not like them. -- So the Europeans said that if
they wanted to improve their lives, they had to integrate themselves into
society.
It meant assimilation, to which the extent required was never
specified
Industrial Revolution gave Jews new opportunities
Finance capitalism, store ownership, railroad investment, etc.
But again,
we’re back to the association with money.
19th
C: Jews joined the urban movement
Example – Berlin: 1852 –
11,840 Jews
1890 – 108,000 Jews
End
of 19th C: antisemitism
again in Europe
Religious: antisemitism had never disappeared
The
Christkiller stereotype…
Political: Prussia
united Germany through war and became the strongest nation in Europe
Gave rise to the alliance system, concept of Europe as an armed
camp
This was bad for Jews; could they ally with a flag?
This looks to
the discussion we just had about integration.
Another idea is that because Jews adhere to their law so closely… -- allying with a flag could be like idol
worship, or compromising God’s laws. –
I think Muslims in a way feel this way today.
Although they recognize themselves as belonging to their country of
origin, it seems like when conflict with America is on the agenda, they band
together as “the Muslim world”.
Socioeconomic: early
socialists were antisemites
Later found that capitalism was true enemy
Upper classes: great
churchmen, nobles, the ultra-rich
The Jew was newly-rich and threatened their status
And the Jew
could never be one of these bishops, and they were kicked off the land.
A Jew could never become a noble or high-ranking army
officer – too alien, too different
Lower middle class:
petty bureaucrats, policemen, public school teachers, office clerks,
farmers
Insecure socially and economically
Jewish shopkeeper or factory owner was their competitor
Sociopsychological: Jews
were associated with modernity (cities, capitalism, Industrial Revolution)
Threatened the old order (ruralism, agriculture) with values of
money and greed
Jews associated with liberalism
French Revolution was associated with Jews
Anyone who rejected modernity rejected the Jews
Ideological: focus moved
to racism
Cloaked in science, anthropology, etymology, anatomy
Getting ahead of
ourselves a bit, the Nazis would send anthropologists out to Gypsy camps to do
studies on the people. At the Holocaust
Museum in Washington, DC, I saw photos of these “scientists” engaged in their
study: measuring head circumference,
ear length, eye and hair color, skin tone…
All of this was done to categorize people for the purpose of
persecution. We’ll look at popular
Jewish caricatures of the day later.
These will show us the type of propaganda antisemites used to influence
public opinion.
Race defines a person more than anything
Good races, superior races: bad races, inferior races
Remind us how
many races are there in the world? --
Three or four, depending on if you count the aborigines of Australia as
separate. -- What are the other
three then? -- Caucasoid, Mongoloid,
and Negroid. Judaism is a religious
group, not a race!!
Social Darwinism: humans
of different races are in a struggle for natural resources
The dominant race (Aryans) will win through natural selection
The anti-race (Jews) will challenge the dominant race
Racist characteristics of Jews:
Soulless – materialistic, carnal
Latin fans, what
does carnal mean? -- It has to do
with meat. So the Jews were interested
in issues of the flesh? -- Right –
it speaks to the materialism.
Ruthless, cosmopolitan
Unchangeable
Present everywhere
Diabolical, powerful
Latin
again? -- Diablo is the devil.
Alien, other
We’ve spoken
often of “the other”…
Germ, microbe to be purged
The Hitler film
we watched over the past couple of days showed the Jews as what? -- Living in squalor, and as rats.
Over-intellectual
What’s this a
reference to? -- You said the other
day that one of the virtues in Judaism is learning and study, and reading. So the Nazis might have viewed the Jews as
too smart for their own good?
Unproductive, parasitical, associated with money
The Aryan was beautiful, natural, pure…
Irrationalism
Feeling with blood, emotion
Non-conformism
Suited the young and disenfranchised
“Master Race morality”
By the end of the 19th C, antisemitism had become
politicized
Peaked in 1890’s
Began to decline shortly before WWI
The notes that
follow are covered extensively in the Grobman text we’ve been using for
pre-lecture reading as well as for homework grades. There was not much discussion, as the students had been assigned
to cover this material in detail on their own.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (published 1905)
Written in Paris office by Russian secret police in 1895
Based on satire written by Maurice Jolie about Napoleon III (r.
1851-76)
Tsar Nicholas II was antisemitic
Premise of international Jewish movement to take over the world
Brought to Europe by right-wing Russians fleeing the Russian
revolutions (1918)
Gave people in the West a sense of blame for the Jews for WWI
Cited again and again by Hitler and other top Nazis
Proved in 1921 by an English journalist to be a plagiarism of
Jolie
Really made no difference in people’s acceptance
Antisemitism
in Germany
Persecutions, expulsions, massacres during High Middle Ages
Diatribes of Luther
Thirty Years’ War (1618-48):
many battles fought on German soil, destroying the area
German states (300+) needed money to rebuild
Hired “court Jews” as lenders, financiers, tax collectors, etc.
to raise revenue
French Revolution:
liberty, equality, fraternity
French armies conquered and occupied Germany
German nationalism refused the ideals of the French Rev.
German nationalism sought to define Germanness
Fichte: volk
Special community endowed with special gifts, from volk-blood
and attached to volk-soil
Encouraged by Romanticism
Jews were excluded from these definitions
Jews blamed for liberal revolutions in the mid-19th C
1870’s: Christian Social
Party
Formed by Lutheran pastor Adolf Stoecker
Antisemitic, German nationalist
1880: antisemitic petition
to the Kaiser
Stop immigration of foreign Jews
Exclude Jews from gov’t
Political height in 1898 (only 3 ½% of vote) in Reichstag
election
Railed against the “money Jew” and capitalism