The Resurgence of 1930s-Style Anti-Semitism
“All Jews to the gas.”
“Jews to the oven.”
“Kill the Jews.”
Recently, those chilling slogans, chanted by tens of thousands, echoed in Europe’s streets.
Yes, you read that correctly.
These were, of course, popular slogans in Germany during World War ii. By this time, Hitler’s unchecked anti-Semitism had matured beyond boycotting Jewish stores, banning Jews from schools, firebombing synagogues and flogging Jews in dark alleys. By the early 1940s, the ultimate expression of hatred toward Jews had been reached: The führer was rounding Jews up like sheep, and cramming them—shocked and naked, men, women and children—into steel chambers, then gassing them.
Granted, the recent Continent-wide choir was largely comprised of European Muslims protesting Israel’s incursion into Gaza and showing support for Hamas. European governments are by no means condoning 1940s-style Nazi anti-Semitism.
That said, the collective passivity of Europeans to these chilling chants in the very least condoned the vitriol, and the ideology behind it. Meanwhile, European governments, state and city authorities, academics, much of the media and much of the European populace did virtually nothing to dampen the hate, many—both leaders and citizens—energetically joined the anti-Semitic chorus. In the mainstream, anti-Israel sentiment—the slick cousin of anti-Semitism—was and is embraced, encouraged and facilitated by European politicians, intellectuals and media.
Call this 1930s-style anti-Semitism, if you will. And history shows that unless it’s checked, it leads to 1940s-style anti-Semitism!
Last month, the Brussels Journalreported: “Far from simply being a spate of isolated incidents, as many Europeans claim, anti-Semitic violence is becoming more commonplace in every country in Europe. At the same time, anti-Israel demonstrations, which have strong anti-Semitic overtones, are being held with alarming frequency in cities across Europe” (emphasis mine throughout).
Anti-Semitism is as fashionable in Britain and Europe today as it was in the 1930s!
In his book The Last Lion, historian William Manchester documented the prevalence of anti-Semitism in both Britain and Europe during the pre-war years. “The martyrdom of Jews [in Britain] in the 1940s would strip anti-Semitism of its respectability,” wrote Manchester,
but in the 1930s it was quite an ordinary thing to see restaurants, hotels, clubs, beaches, and residential neighborhoods barred to people with what were delicately called “dietary requirements.” … Contempt for [Jews] was not considered bad form. They were widely regarded as unlovable, alien, loud-mouthed, “flashy” people who enriched themselves at the expense of Gentiles.
The same reality exists today. “The Palestinian people in Gaza are the new Warsaw ghetto,” declared British member of Parliament George Galloway recently, “and those who are murdering them are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1943.” Animosity toward Jews infects Britain’s elite as virulently as it did in the 1930s—or even more so.
“Jew-baiting is especially intense in the UK,” wrote Isi Leibler in the Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
Prominent Jews encounter death threats. Students at Oxford University have gleefully proclaimed that in five years, their campus “would be a Jew-free zone.” A high-ranking British diplomat was arrested after publicly launching a foul-mouthed anti-Semitic tirade. The London-based Royal Court Theater is staging a viciously anti-Israeli play by Caryl Churchill that Melanie Phillips described in the Spectator as reminiscent of anti-Semitic plays performed in the Middle Ages portraying Jews as demonic Christ-killers.
With examples like that, it’s no wonder anti-Semitic incidents are skyrocketing in Britain. Last Friday, the Community Security Trust reported that the number of attacks against Jews was more than six times higher in the four weeks following the start of Operation Cast Lead than in the same period last year. Persecuting Jews has become a national pastime; beatings are increasingly common, and prominent Jews in Britain have been encouraged by authorities to step up personal security, as many are on hit lists. These days, in many cases, Jewish functions require a team of bodyguards to protect participants. During one demonstration in London recently, participants—many of whom were native Britons—as well as police and onlookers, didn’t look twice at a man dressed as a Jewish caricature, replete with a mask of a long, crooked nose, pretending to eat babies.
It’s a measure of the twisted British mindset today that—just as was the case prior to World War ii—it is more infatuated with the forces seeking its destruction than it is loyal to its friends needing its assistance!
The similarities between anti-Semitism in 1930s Europe (not just Germany) and Europe today are striking, and chilling. Anti-Semitism permeated much of Western Europe during the ’30s in much the same way as it did Britain. Of course, it was most virulent in Germany. By the mid-’30s, wrote Manchester, Churchill’s informants
reported that all over Germany … motion picture theaters, shops and restaurants were displaying prominent signs reading “Juden unerwiinsht” (“Jews not welcome”). Day-to-day existence was becoming increasingly difficult for non-Aryans. “Fur Juden kein zutritt” (“Jews not admitted”) placards hung outside grocery and butchers’ shops; they could not enter dairies to buy milk for their infants, or pharmacies to fill prescriptions, or hotels to find lodging. At every turn they were taunted ….
This may seem impossible, but this is where Europe—a so-called modern bastion of multiculturalism and tolerance—is rapidly moving toward today!
Across the Continent, politicians are, to varying degrees, sanctioning—even promoting—the persecution of Jews. Their hatred is often cloaked in anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian rhetoric and gestures; underneath, however, it’s often nothing less than blatant anti-Jewishness. Take Dutch mp Harry van Bommel, for example, who last month called for a new intifada against Israel. Others are demanding boycotts against Israeli products. In reality, this often means the boycotting of Jewish-owned stores, which in more honest circles might be called commercial anti-Semitism. They are a little more direct in Italy, where Giancarlo Desiderati, spokesman for the Flaica-CUB trade union, has demanded a boycott of all Jewish shops in Rome, and has warned Romans, in a leaflet distributed by his outfit, that goods they purchase from Jewish-owned stores are “tainted by blood.”
These are nothing less than blatant attempts—by key European figures no less—to put Jews out of business!
Serge Benhaim, president of a Jewish community in Paris, recently described daily life for many Jews in France: “Almost every day we witness severe racially motivated incidents, and tension has only intensified after the operation in Gaza. We don’t take the train after 7 p.m., we wear a skullcap only under a hat, and our youths don’t wander the streets late at night anymore.”
that’s 1930s-style anti-Semitism!
The National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism in France reported that within about three weeks following the start of the war in Gaza it had received more than 100 reports of violence against Jews. Across Europe, synagogues, Jewish centers and Jewish memorials are being firebombed and ransacked. Jews are being persecuted, verbally abused and beaten. In Denmark, two Israelis were recently shot and wounded in a shopping mall. In Belgium, Jewish schools are being desecrated; Jewish community leaders are receiving death threats, and a plot to burn a Jewish family alive was foiled. During many of the recent anti-Israel demonstrations, Nazi imagery was resurrected; signs and chants likened Israeli soldiers to Nazi troops, the Gaza Strip was compared to Auschwitz, and the Star of David was replaced with Nazi swastikas.
Even Jewish children are not being spared. In some parts of Denmark, school authorities are refusing to accept Jewish students—some out of fear it might upset the Muslim students, others because they despise Israel. In Britain, Jewish schoolchildren have been bullied and persecuted for belonging to a people supposedly “with blood on their hands.”
Let’s not misunderstand: While there has been a surge in anti-Jewish incidents since Israel’s incursion into Gaza, the war was more of an excuse or outlet for venting latent, abiding prejudice and hatred than a root cause of the current surge in anti-Semitism!
One reason we know this is that we are increasingly seeing the global financial crisis exploited in the same manner the war in Gaza was. Last week, the Anti-Defamation League (adl) reported on a survey it had commissioned that found nearly a third of Europeans blame Jews for the global economic meltdown and that a large number of Europeans believe Jews have too much power in the business world. In Spain, 74 percent of those polled said they felt it was “probably true” that Jews hold too much sway over the global financial markets. Nearly two thirds lamented that the Jews were more loyal to Israel than their home countries.
Anti-Semitism in Britain and Europe today is the worst it has been since World War ii!
History tells us where it will end. The Second World War brutally broke up Britain’s love affair with Nazism, and Hitler’s unspeakable persecution of Jews shocked (at least temporarily) many British and Europeans out of their lurid anti-Semitism. Although Britain and Western Europe finally woke up and partly redeemed their rank stupidity and naivety by destroying Hitler and the Axis powers, it was too late for the 60 million people who died in World War ii!
The lesson is poignant: When nations coddle radical regimes and embrace their genocidal ambitions, they make catastrophic destruction inevitable!
Today, Britain and Europe are repeating the same mistakes they did in the 1930s. They are again infatuated with a radical ideology bent on their destruction, and have fueled the resurrection of the dormant anti-Semitism that has waxed and waned in the European mindset for centuries.
It’s a tragedy with gigantic implications; Britain and Europe today have returned to their foolish, naive, war-inducing ways of the 1930s!
The end result can only be 1940s-type destruction.
