Antisemitism in recent history and today: How has it manifested?

Antisemitism is not a new phenomenon rekindled by the rise of Nazism. It existed throughout modern history and was very prevalent during the Middle Ages.

By WALTER BINGHAM
Opernplatz, Berlin book burnings, 1933. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Opernplatz, Berlin book burnings, 1933.
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
According to the recently released annual report on antisemitism by the Diaspora Affairs Ministry, 2020 saw a marked increase of anti-Jewish hate incidents, both in Europe and America. Many were sparked by conspiracy theories connecting the State of Israel with the spread of COVID-19, others by events surrounding the US elections.
Antisemitism is not a new phenomenon rekindled by the rise of Nazism. It existed throughout modern history and was very prevalent during the Middle Ages. Before World War I, radical racist antisemitism was confined to the fringe of right-wing politics throughout most of Europe and in the United States. Nevertheless, enduring stereotypes of Jews and so-called Jewish behavior continued to exist among non-Jews.
World War I was called the war to end all wars. As we know only too well, that was a false hope. Under the punitive Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, Germany was to be subdued and humiliated and deprived of not only of its overseas territories but also stripped of its main manufacturing base.
Germany was expected to assume all guilt for starting WWI; she had to pay $33 billion in reparations to the Allies and cede territory to France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and the new nations of Poland and Lithuania.
Her Navy and Air Force was to be dismantled and her Army reduced to less than 100,000 men. The League of Nations was established to oversee peace in the world.
Germany’s total population in 1920 was about 60 million and unemployment stood at six million, a huge percentage for a central European country, made up in part of the disheveled and disillusioned returning soldiers as well as the loss of manufacturing.
A “stab-in-the-back legend” attributed the German and Austrian defeat in WWI to internal traitors working for foreign interests, primarily Jews and communists. This legend was widely believed and deliberately disseminated by the defeated German military leadership, seeking to avoid personal consequences for their policies. Like other negative stereotypes about Jews, the stab-in-the-back legend was accepted, despite the fact that it was entirely untrue. German Jews had served in the German armed forces loyally, bravely, and out of proportion to their numbers in the population.
Following increasing financial crises, Germany was no longer able to pay reparations, the German Mark became worthless and by November 1923, the US dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks.
People went shopping, carrying their money in suitcases. In addition to the state printing office, more than 130 companies were commissioned to print banknotes, and as long as paper was readily available a total of 1,783 presses churned out the nation’s bills.
Employees brought rucksacks to work on payday to carry their money – and then spent it immediately. Eventually with the aid of various financial instruments this hyperinflation was halted and by 1924 there was a new more stable currency in circulation.
A conspiracy theory took root that the inflation was brought about by Jewish manipulation, a plot to ruin Germany. The currency became known as “Judefetzen” (Jews-confetti), beginning the chain of events that would lead to Kristallnacht a decade later.
A 50-million-mark bill, was issued in July 1923, just a few months before the inflation peaked. Originally, the reverse side of the bill was left blank, but in this sample, an informal nationalist, antisemitic printing was scrawled on.
As in many moments of crisis throughout history, the period of inflation was a time to cast blame for the eradication of private wealth: the antisemites were convinced that the “rich Jews” bore all of the responsibility.
The translation of the print on the reverse of the banknote:
“Like the fungus and the lichens on the oak
The Jew mushrooms on the German trunk.
And where Jews thrive best,
One hears poverty crying out loudest.”
THE GOVERNMENT during that period was called the Weimar Republic, named after a meeting in the town of Weimar.
In the 13 years of the Weimar Republic’s existence, from 1919 until January 1933 some 40 parties were represented in the Reichstag, the German Parliament. That included the NSDAP, the National Socialist German Workers Party, known as Nazis, the term taken from the first four letters of its official title, NATIonal, in German pronunciation. All that contributed to political instability.
There were several general elections and the NSDAP gained in each one, because the Nazi propaganda depicted Weimar as 14 years of rule by Jews, Marxists, and “cultural Bolsheviks.” To cancel that culture was the underlying aim. There is nothing new in radical fundamentalist politics.
Another contribution to antisemitism was the stab-in-the-back myth, the notion, promulgated in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that the German army did not lose World War I on the battlefield, but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19.
The antisemitic instincts of the German army were revealed well before the stab-in-the-back myth became the military’s excuse for losing the war.
In October 1916, the middle of World War I, the army ordered a “Jewish census” of the troops, with the intent to show that Jews were under-represented in the Army and that they were over-represented in non-fighting positions. Instead, the census showed just the opposite, that Jews were over-represented both in the army generally and in fighting positions at the front in particular. The army command then suppressed the results of the census.
All this is ample evidence that antisemitism in Germany was always deep-rooted in the culture, just below the surface, waiting to be utilized. It was, therefore, convenient for Hitler to make it a tool of his policy to place the blame for the results of the Versailles treaty and the economic disaster on Jewish manipulation – and after it became well and truly embedded in the German’s mind, he was easily able to commit his atrocities on the Jewish population.
It was all conducted in the framework of changing Germany’s cultural landscape to promote what they considered to be traditional “German” and “Nordic” values, to remove Jewish, “foreign,” and “degenerate” influences, and to shape a racial community which is aligned with Nazi ideals.
To this end, already very early on, they established The Reich Culture Chambers, composed of the Reich Film Chamber, Reich Music Chamber, Reich Theater Chamber, Reich Press Chamber, Reich Writing Chamber, Reich Chamber for Fine Arts, and the Reich Radio Chamber to supervise and regulate all facets of German culture.
Nazi aesthetics emphasized the propagandistic value of art and glorified the peasantry, the Aryan race and the heroism of war. All in stark contrast to modern, innovative art, such as abstract painting, which they denounced as “degenerate art.”
That led to the infamous book burning when in May 1933 a long list of prescribed books written by or favorably about Jews had to be cleared from public library shelves and delivered to a special place to be burned. The same order applied to private residents under pain of heavy penalty.
On the 10th of that month, the bonfires were lit and German culture went up in flames accompanied by Nazi songs and salutes to Hitler. I was just nine years old and with my friends usually went to the Castle Park in my hometown. We were there on that day, and I saw the fire and heard the cheers, as people threw books deemed “degenerate” into the fire.
It is interesting that at the turn of the millennium Time magazine asked its readers: Who contributed most to the 20th century? The winner was Albert Einstein, whose books were burned that night.
All that anti-Jewish activity soon after Hitler’s accession to power, was directed at the just 500,000 Jews in Germany at the time, representing a mere 0.75 % of the total population of 67 million. Interestingly, most Germans knew at least one “good Jew,” so the mathematics don’t really add up, do they?
I lived through nine years of the Weimar Republic with its, if you like, soft antisemitism followed by six years of successively harsher Nazi persecution of Jews.
Now fast forward to 1945. Following the end of WWII, the world made great efforts to publicize the horrific results of antisemitism and vowed to end such discrimination once and for all.
Legislation was introduced in many countries in Europe and elsewhere, to make it an offence to discriminate on the basis of race ethnicity or religion. Antisemitism in all its forms was particularly prohibited.
During the early post-war years I really believed that this scourge has been eliminated and that with the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel Jews will now be treated like all other people. But my optimism was soon deflated.
A new wave of antisemitism has emerged, masquerading as anti-Zionism which, supported by militant Islamists and pan-Arabism has spread worldwide.
In fact, it has lit the flame of the old antisemitism and generated a movement of neo-Nazism which we see today based on hatred of Jews without rational, or simply on historical precedent in some cases as far back as the crucifixion; in more recent times perhaps hatred of the success of Jewish enterprise, or simply as the scapegoat for economic difficulties.
Today this antisemitism has taken on the form that existed in the early 1930’s and has a very large, but so far relatively silent following, that could well explode into a pogrom of unspeakable proportions, were it not for the legislation enacted by many countries, often ignored, and of course for the existence of the State of Israel with its intelligence services and military power.
We see the signs almost every day in the capitals and large cities of Europe where attacks on Jews and Jewish property are commonplace. No need to list them here.
But it is important to note that it is even happening in the land of the free and the home of the brave. According to the widely read monthly Atlantic, American antisemitism is as old as America itself.
For decades, American Jews have faced social discrimination, acts of vandalism against sacred spaces, and, in recent years, social-media harassment – and the number of reported antisemitic incidents has risen dramatically since 2016.
We have seen fatal attacks against American Jews as well as these other forms of discrimination.
American history is full of episodes of physical violence against Jews and Jewish institutions often resulting in death. Jewish areas of New York frequently experience attacks on Jews.
Many methods of countering this irrational evil have been tried and failed. It is up to us to demonstrate the contribution that Jews in general and the Jewish state in particular, are continually making to improve the living standard of peoples all over the world. ■
The writer, at 97, holds the Guinness World Record as the oldest active journalist and radio show host. He presents Walter’s World on Israel National Radio (Arutz 7) and The Walter Bingham File on Israel Newstalk Radio. Both are in English.


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