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Antisemitism, Christianity, Pogroms: Backcloth to Destruction [Note: This file may change as a result of additions, elaborations, or corrections. If quoting, remember to cite the date on which the file was consulted, or the date when it was last modified, listed at the bottom of the page.] Whilst
the term antisemitism only began to be widely used from the 1870s, that
which it designates can be traced back more than two thousand years.
Katz referred to it as The Longest Hatred.
The
Dutch scholar Sevenster "underlined the existence of a vigorous
pagan anti-Semitism in Egypt and ancient Rome." ( In Dimsdale (ed.)
1980,p.56; Maccoby, 2000, p.1) Tacitus,
referring to the Jews, stated that they "have for each other a stubborn attachment, an active
compassion, which contrasts with the implacable hatred they feel towards
the rest of mankind. Never
do they eat, never do they sleep with foreigners, and this race,
although quite inclined to debauchery, abstains from any dealings with
foreign women."
(Girard, p.56) Although
hostility towards Jews was prevalent in the ancient world, it is common
to trace the origins and progress of Western anti-Semitism to the birth,
development and spread of Christianity: "If one carefully scrutinizes the "Valley of Tears" that
comprises Jewish history, one is obliged to note that in contrast to the
Jews living in Christian or Moslem lands, the Jews of India and China
never experienced persecution".
Jules
Isaac and Leon Poliakov have concluded from this singular phenomenon
that the first real anti-Semitism was Christian anti-Semitism, which
developed through the teaching of scorn for the Jews and their
systematic degradation as a deicidal people. Indeed, in contrast to the
preceding period, the Christianisation of the [Roman] Empire,
accomplished in 321, turned out be full of disastrous consequences.(ibid,57) The
relationship between Christianity and antisemitism is a symbiotic one.
Christianity extolled its distinctiveness, superiority, and
cultural mission, by using Judaism, of which it was an outgrowth, as a
contrast conception. By
vilifying Jews and Judaism, by denying that they were the chosen
people, Christian theologians sought to assist in the proselytising
of their own religious ideology.
Unlike the Nazis, they did not advocate the destruction of
Judaism, or the extermination of all Jews.
They were, in a sense, necessary, and useful as occasional
scapegoats on which violent propensities of Christian communities could
be unleashed; a form of social pressure valve.
Although "Christianity did not call for the death
of the Jews, since it had “theological need” for them, one cannot
ignore the fact that this was an a posteriori need. Degradation
of the Jews was the substitute for their extermination. Christianity
could not demand the [total] killing of the Jews… since their extermination would have cast doubt on the Christian
demand to be considered the legal heir of the Jewish creed: “No jury
would agree to grant a legacy to someone who won it through murdering
the testator.” ” (Bachrach, p.72) Social
antipathy toward Jews in Greco-Roman society was based on differences in
life-style and the nature of their religion:
“the essence of the conflict between Judaism and
Christianity is mainly theological, grounded in the issue of Jesus as
the Messiah, and in the place of Judaism and the Jews in the Old and New
Testaments. The Christian
church ascribes to the Jews as such the guilt of deicide, and the
inferior status to which Christianity relegated the Jews was interpreted
not only as an expression of Christianity’s superiority, but also as
proof of its veracity, of the `victory of the Church over the Synagogue.'” (Gutman
pp.55-56) The guilt that was ascribed to Jews was a collective guilt;
the guilt not only of those that lived at the time of the alleged
deicide, but of all Jews in all times: “The
distinction made between Christians, seen as personifying God’s truth
and mercy and representing the true Israel, and the Jews, seen as
heretics wallowing in sin, developed into simplistic folk motifs in
which the Jew is the embodiment of evil, the schemer and bearer of harm
and disaster-that is, he is linked to and endowed with demonic powers.”
(ibid) This
was reflected in the pervasive spread throughout European societies of
certain images of the Jew, stereotypical conceptions of what they were
like, physically, morally, economically, and politically. These stereotypical conceptions “entered the folklore of Christian peoples, their cultural
legacy, their literature, and their education, and were no longer mere
components of religious thought but part of the general cultural
background of Western society.”
Wherever Western culture exerted its influence, whether being exerted
through territorial, cultural or religious expansion, this component of
Western culture traveled as well. Consequently
it has not been uncommon to find that persons who reside in remote parts
of the world, who have never had any contact with Jews, hold antisemitic
attitudes and negative affective reactions toward them. The
history of Christian Europe, in all geographical locations, was
accompanied periodically by outbursts of anti-Semitism, on a varying
scale in terms of casualties, deportations, and cultural dislocations. As Aronson has noted, since the beginning of the Christian
era, if not earlier, "a
polluted current of anti-Jewish sentiment has flowed through European
life. All too often the
current welled into torrents of physical violence." (Aronson, p.3) Anti-Jewish
hostility
manifested itself in variety of ways. Intense outbursts of violence,
which could be restricted to a particular village, town or city, or
could cover entire regions, were not uncommon. During such outbursts,
their property was at risk of destruction, their womenfolk in danger of
being raped, and Jews of all ages and genders lost their lives in
frenetic outbursts of violence, or sustained injury and property loss. In some periods and
places whole communities were obliterated. Not infrequently they were
banished from principalities or countries, as they had been from England and
Spain. Until the middle of
the nineteenth century in many European countries various restrictions
were placed on members of the Jewish population. These included
restrictions on the type of occupations Jews could pursue, the lands
they could own, and the type and level of education that was open to
them. In many places there were restrictions on which parts of the
cities or countryside they could reside in.
In some countries they were restricted to living in medieval type
ghettoes well into the nineteenth century; the Popes had confined
Jewish residence in the Roman city to a ghetto between 1555 and 1870. (Zuccotti,
2000, pp. 4-5) In other countries, Russia for instance, they were limited to
settlement in certain areas, such as that part of the Ukraine known as
the Pale of Settlement. Where no such restrictions existed, Jews tended to cluster in
specific sections of towns or villages, for mutual protection due to the
actual or potential hostility of the local populace, or to take
advantage of the cultural and economic benefits to be derived from
concentrated communal settlement. Various reasons may be advanced to account for the intensity of hostility directed at this particular group, and the length of time over which it has been sustained. First, in the various countries of their dispersal the Jewish community was culturally distinct from the host community. They practiced a different religion and frequently pursued occupational activities that were specialised and different. Jews tended to reside in geographically concentrated enclaves, and rarely socialised or integrated with the host community. Assimilation was extremely rare until the latter part of the nineteenth century, and then only in a limited number of countries, effecting a very small proportion of their Jewish populations. Their language, dress, eating and drinking habits, day of rest, socialising and religious practices, were different. It
does not really matter whether this cultural separateness is explained
in terms of the desire of substantial segments of the Jewish community
to maintain a distinct sense of identity, or whether this geographical
segregation resulted from policies and decisions taken by elites or
power-brokers of the host communities, or a combination of both.
The results were the same. The
Jewish community appeared to be culturally distinct, separate, and
following a way of life that was seen as strange and peculiar. Hardly
surprising, therefore, that they should frequently, if not invariably, be perceived as
alien to
the communities among whom they had settled. Perception
of cultural distinctiveness is frequently a basis for the classification
of its bearers as dangerous, and the attribution to them of various
undesirable motives, characteristics, and behavioral tendencies.
This has occurred with such regularity and in so many diverse
social structures, in relation to so many different groups,
differentiated along varied dimensions, including religion, nationality, race, and skin colour, that
for all practical purposes no grave error will be involved in regarding
this as being virtually inevitable.
At the very least, cultural differences can always be used as a
basis for demarcating groups from each other and, thereafter,
attributing various characteristics to its members on the sole basis of
that group membership. In
these terms, hostility manifested towards Jews can be accounted for in
much the same ways as historians, social psychologists and sociologists,
would account for hostility towards other ‘minority groups.’
Hostility directed at those perceived as out-groups is easily
traceable throughout recorded history, and has been found in virtually
every known society. There
are few countries in which it is not possible currently to illustrate this by reference to tensions between those defined as
members of the in-group, and those as members of out-groups, whether the
criteria for demarcation are ethnicity, religion, language, nationality,
culture, physical appearance, or behaviour.
In recent decades tensions associated with such social markers
have frequently been externalised in torture, mass killings, rapes, and
other indescribable cruelties in the course
of internal and international conflicts, very much as they had on
innumerable occasions in the past. What distinguished antisemitism, that is,
negatively charged attitudes, and hostile behaviours toward Jews, has
been its longevity, intensity, and scale of geographical and cultural dispersion. This must be attributed largely to the centrality of its
institutionalisation in Western culture until the latter part of the
twentieth century. As noted
earlier, and as emphasised by Maccoby, even the more radical
antisemitism “that sees the Jews as the earthly agents of a cosmic
force for evil did not begin with Christianity…
But Christianity is the channel through which this radical
anti-Semitism was transmitted to the medieval and modern world.” (ibid) Hostility
to Jews has been part of the Christian tradition since its inception.
Negative attitudes toward Jews, deriving from religious
doctrines, have been proselytised wherever Christian churches have been
established. At some time
during the last two thousand years, in virtually every European country,
restrictions have
been imposed on Jews. The combination of long standing
negative attitudes, cultural and social separateness, and discriminatory
policies resulted in the creation of a common Western antisemitic heritage.
Although hostility to other perceived out-groups has also been
institutionalised in many cultures, as in the case of blacks in the
Americas, Moslems in certain European countries, and Romany virtually
everywhere, in no other instance has the enmity been so central to core
cultural ideologies and practices over such an extended period of time,
nor has this enmity been deliberately proselytised, or traveled as
ideological baggage over such wide geo-cultural expanses. Another
important difference between antisemitism and many other expressions of
out-group hostility in European history, relates to the type of danger
that the Jews were assumed to pose. Because Christianity had its roots
in Judaism, the conflict between Jew and Christian on the theological, doctrinal plane, was especially intense.
As the Christian church endeavoured to establish its credentials
in the course of a radical
demarcation of its
doctrines from those of the Jews, Judaism was always seen as
theologically particularly dangerous. During the Crusades the Jews were
the most immediate victims, for, as the Abbé of Cluny observed: "What
is the good of going to the end of the world, at great loss in men and
money, to fight the Saracens, when we tolerate among us other infidels a
thousand times more guilty towards Christ than the Mohhamedans."
(Bermant, p.21) Hostility to Jews
was also a by-product of the fact that, despite the restrictions that
were invariably placed upon them, some of their number occupied in
particular periods important positions in the political and financial structures of some European
societies. Thus, in medieval
England, the Jewish financier, Aaron of Lincoln, is estimated to have
been the second wealthiest person in the realm, after only the King,
who, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and countless other
prelates, nobles, and churches, was in his debt. In
Poland, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries some Jews became "administrators, merchants, lessees of the great estates of
the Polish nobility, tax-farmers and tax collectors and, as Poland
expanded eastwards into the Ukraine, they moved with the armies as
agents of the ruling power."
(Bermant, p.12).
In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jews in
other European countries, particularly in Austria, the German
principalities, and France, occupied important financial positions, and
were heavily involved in the financing of the emergence of the modern
nation state. Consequently,
it was not difficult in some societies to portray them as the
manipulators of governments and regimes, the power behind thrones.
Dislocations
of communities, an increase in social tension, and the dispersion of
widespread anxieties and fears have in the past invariably accompanied
major social changes and natural calamities.
Where Jews resided in communities experiencing such events, they
frequently became targets of upsurges of community violence.
The Black Death of the fourteenth century was calamitous in its
impact on communities. During
the years 1348 to 1350 this epidemic of bubonic plague killed more than
a third of the population of Europe: "The scale and remorselessness of the calamity, its very
inexplicability, gave rise to extremes of behaviour and wild
speculation. The Jews, it
was whispered, were in league with Satan and were poisoning wells.
The Black Death, it was suggested, was their doing.
They were out to destroy Christendom.
The declaration of Pope Clement VI that `since this pestilence is
all but universal everywhere, and by a mysterious decree of God has
afflicted, and continues to afflict, both Jews and many other nations
[the charge] that the Jews have provided the cause or the occasion for
such a crime is without plausibility', proved unavailing.
In many towns those Jews who had been spared by the Black Death
were cut down by their neighbours and entire communities were wiped out
in the Low Countries, France, Germany and Austria."
(Bermant, p.24) Social
upheavals were frequently also the occasion for massive outbursts of
violence against resident Jewish communities.
Jewish settlement in the Ukraine began toward the end of the
sixteenth century, with the expansion of Poland eastward. This expansion was accompanied by extensive exploitation of
the local, Ukrainian populace by the Polish government and its military
representatives. When the
local populace, under the
leadership of Bogdan Khemelnitsky, rose against its Polish
oppressors, the consequences were disastrous for the Jewish
communities which had settled on Ukrainian soil.
As Heifetz notes, when the local population "freed
themselves from the chains of political and economic enslavement, they
swept away not only the lords, but also their agents, the Jews, who were
their leaseholders and tenant farmers.
Several hundred Jewish settlements were completely destroyed."
(Heifetz, 1919. p.6) Cautious estimates put the number of Jews massacred at 100,000. There are no grounds for believing that the Jews were significantly responsible for the privations of the Ukrainian population. As the Ukrainian historian Ivan Franko noted, "unfair practices of the Jews, so far as there were such, are insignificant as compared with the abuses committed by the Polish government and the Polish military." (ibid, pp.4-5) The
Ukraine was the scene of numerous pogroms against Jews down until the
entrenchment of Bolshevik power in 1921.
Any period of major social upheaval would result in further
massacres of the Jewish populace. During
the years 1918-1921, at the height of the conflict between the Red and
White armies during the Bolshevik Revolution, the Ukraine was in a state
of nearly permanent turmoil, with first one army being in control of
particular territories, then another.
Ukrainian nationalists, who were opposing the Bolshevik armies,
fell back on antisemitism and pogroms as a means of ensuring the
continuing loyalty of the peasant population to its flag, and of
rewarding them for their continuing support. Pogroms against Jews were both a means of payment and a kind
of reward for nationalist troops: pillage, rape and murder were
compensations for the privations endured in fighting the Red armies, in
much the same way as, according to Bartov, soldiers of the Wehrmacht
were rewarded for the extreme privations they experienced on the
eastern front as Operation Barbarossa was thrown into reverse. The nationalist leadership, when not deliberately encouraging
pogroms, made it clear that those guilty of outrages against the Jewish
population would not be punished. It
created "a
conviction throughout the Ukraine that Jewish pogroms were not punished,
that the possessions of the Jews might be plundered, that Jewish women
might be violated and that there was no prohibition against the
annihilation of the Jews. ".
(ibid, pp.80-81) Friedman
notes that the exact number of Jews who died at the hands of the
pogromchiks between 1917 and 1921, is not known.
There were 1,400 known incidents, in 688 places: "Estimates range from N Gergel's cautious low of fifty to sixty
thousand [with an equal number of wounded]...to Howard Sachar's
conjecture that more than two hundred and fifty thousand were slain or
permitted to starve to death between 1915 and 1921." (Freidman, p.14) The
conditions that gave rise to pogroms varied from era to era and from
place to place, as did the socio-structural location of the Jewish
population. One
framework for analysing outbursts of antisemitism draws attention to the
specific socio-structural location of Jewish communities, and the role of
key Jewish brokers, as possible explanatory variables.
In line with this approach, attention is focused on the nature of
the immediate patterns of interaction between Jews and varied segments of the populations among
whom they resided, with a view to identifying the sources of tension. As
Ettinger notes, in terms of this model, "the conflict that prevails, for instance, between the
working or peasant class and their exploiters, gives rise to antagonism
between the former and the Jews because the latter belong to the
parasitic and exploitative classes.
The hatred of the middle class for the Jews who are merchants and
middlemen, finds its basis in the competitive relationship with the
urban elements. The same can be said for the hatred for upper classes toward
the Jewish plutocracy of the nineteenth century... All in all, antisemitism is an expression of the real
social tension that exists between Jews and other classes."
(op.cit. p.7). This
perspective is essentially sociological. This
mode of analysis gives rise to a number of difficulties if it is
employed as a universal explanation for outbursts of antisemitism in
disparate cultural and temporal locations.
First, there is no evidence that in realistic terms the Jews
could be considered as a class of exploiters, or that they were
everywhere in significant competition with the urban middle classes,
particularly as the latter were not especially prominent in many central
and eastern European cultures, which were predominantly agrarian.
This perception of Jewry was disseminated at precisely the time
when Eastern European Jews were becoming ever more impoverished.
The Jews of Central and Western Europe were at this time also
increasingly moving from service and brokerage occupations to manual
labour. Only a small
segment of the Jewish population has ever been especially wealthy.
Secondly, as Ettinger emphasises, "in
spite of the conflicts between various classes, they have stood united
in their hatred for the Jews who in almost no situation appear as allies
of a non-Jewish group."
(p.7). Hostility to Jews
transcended the hostilities engendered by the class system. Consequently, although the social function of Jews in many
communities necessarily was a source of friction between them and other
segments, hostility to Jews can justifiably be said to have been
over-determined. In
addition to approaches that emphasise the significance of religious
ideologies, with their associated distillation of cultural
representations of Jews, and socio-structural explanations that search
for the specific nature of the patterns of interaction between Jews and
Christians in diverse communities, an additional approach, espoused by
social psychologists, emphasises universal categorising tendencies as
explanatory variables. This perspective, which cannot be developed at length here,
emphasises the proclivities of individuals and groups to categorise
phenomena in the interest of cognitive economy, giving rise to
stereotypy and discrimination against those so classified.
It is linked to the socio-structural approach by the homologous
emphasis placed on group interactions and conflicts in reinforcing
stereotypes and stabilising antagonistic attitudes and behaviours.
However, universal tendencies for categorisation and stereotypy
cannot possibly account for the variable social contexts in which
outbreaks of violence toward Jews have occurred, or their variable
timing and intensity. Hostility
toward Jews has been more pervasive and violent in some societies than
others; accordingly, the universal tendencies postulated could not
conceivably account
satisfactorily for this. The
complexity and longevity of patterns of interactions between Jews and
Christians suggests that there is no simple, one-factor explanation of
antisemitism.
The reasons for outbreaks of anti-Jewish pogroms in eighteenth,
nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia and the Ukraine, are
likely to have been rooted in some very different factors from those
that can be held to account for mass outbreaks of violence during the
Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, or the Third Reich.
As Rogger notes, "Pogroms or riots were experienced by Jews who were emancipated
and by those who were not, by rich and poor, under monarchical and
republican regimes of the most diverse political coloration, in cities
as well as in country districts, in times of peace, war, and revolution."
(Rogger, p.325) Some
outbursts of anti-Jewish violence appear to have been relatively
spontaneous, disturbances that the political authorities endeavoured to
suppress. Evidence "from Germany in 1819, as well as from other times
and places, indicates that large and small eruptions were rarely, if
ever, the result of prior planning or coordination.
Discrimination and propaganda, by pointing to Jews as the source
of popular discontents and miseries, made them particularly susceptible
to attacks which antisemitic agitators and organizations may have helped
to spread. They did so in
Germany in 1881, France in 1898, and Poland in 1936.
But none of these outbreaks were attributed to deliberate, much
less careful, organization."
(ibid, p.326) With
the emergence of the modern state some political parties deliberately
fostered and manipulated hostility toward Jews in their quest for power.
Although in earlier historical periods some ruling elites had
episodically manipulated antagonism toward Jews to serve their own ends,
it was never sustained for long, or attempted on the scale that it has
been in the modern nation state. This
"became
a widely used weapon only in the Modern Era when a majority of European
countries adopted democratic political practices thus giving
considerable influence to political parties and their programs." (Ettinger, p.11)
The political manipulation of antisemitism was most extensively
openly deployed, developed and sustained in Weimar and Nazi Germany.
In
accounting for antisemitism, therefore, it is necessary to take into
account a range of factors. First
and foremost there is the entrenched Christian and European cultural
legacy, consisting of numerous representations of Jews, most of which
are associated with negative affect.
These representations were disseminated in popular oral
traditions, in literature, in art, music, theological doctrines, and
academic treatises. Another
set of factors is rooted in the specific patterns of relationships that
developed between Jewish communities and the host communities among
which they had settled. It
is at this level that social psychological attitudes toward out-groups
become important. Third,
attention needs to be paid to broad social and cultural changes that had
an impact on the relations between Jews and Christians, and which
transcended the boundaries of particular nation states.
Industrialization, enlightenment, the formation of the nation
state-all of these had implications for the relations between Jews and
Christians, irrespective of the unique conditions prevailing in the
localities where these groups resided and interacted.
Finally, and particularly as far as the Holocaust is concerned,
it is necessary to focus attention on the political usages of
antisemitism in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. The sources of anti-Semitism in different periods
can be traced to either particularistic or universalistic concerns, or
some combination of the two. Pogroms
in specific localities might be a by-product of the legacy of the
historical relations between Jews and non-Jews coupled with some local
factors, or their manifestation might be an expression of much broader
socio-cultural factors, expressing less localised conditions than the
manifestation of broader cultural trends in particular places. During the nineteenth century anti-Semitism assumed
symbolic significance in the ideological framework of many European
political tendencies. As
Ernst Nolte, in his The Three Faces of Fascism, pointed out:
“It must not be forgotten that every significant ideology of the 19th
century had its own brand of antisemitism. Liberal antisemitism accused
the Jews of anti-historical rigidity, intolerance and “national
separateness.” In socialist thought the Jews stood for the chief
exemplifiers of the capitalist spirit and its “mamonism.” What
conservatives disliked most about the Jews was their spirit of unrest,
their tendency toward revolution.” According to Bachrach, as these
political tendencies were manifestations of universal ideals,
antisemitism became universalised. (p. 65) In Hitler’s Weltanschauung (world view),
antisemitism was of central symbolic significance, which added up to
much more than a summation of the particularistic objections expressed
toward them, such as their hold over the economy, their political
inclinations, and so on. The
Jews were conceived of as the enemies of humankind, as is clear from
statements made by Hitler in Mein Kampf, such as the
following: “If with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew
is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the
funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will as it did millions of
years ago move through the ether devoid of men. Hence today, I believe,
that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by
defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the
Lord.” Elsewhere, in the
same work, he noted: “Now begins the great last revolution. In gaining
political power the Jew casts off the few cloaks that he still wears.
The democratic people’s Jew becomes the blood-Jew and tyrant over
peoples. The end is not only the end of the freedom of the peoples
oppressed by the Jew, but also the end of this parasite upon the
nations. After the death of his victim, the vampire sooner or later dies
too.” In fighting world Jewry, then, Nazism was not just
advancing particularistic interests of the Germanic nation, but, in the
view of its leading acolytes, defending and acting as the savior of all
humanity. In
Christian theology the notion that the Jews had been the chosen
people was identified with earthly wealth and possessions. Hitler, in identifying the Jews as capitalists, bankers,
monetary bloodsuckers, and similar, was continuing this tradition.
The Jew was also identified as the carrier of other undesirable
attributes and attitudes: internationalism, democracy, rebellion,
socialism and pacifism, mostly identified by Hitler, Himmler, and
Rosenberg, as plagues of
humanity. Bachrach draws a distinction between Nazi racism and antisemitism. Racism was, he argues, an “opportunistic, arbitrary, and cynical weapon, which even Nazi activists were prepared to take lightly.” Hitler noted in a discussion with Rauschning, that he was perfectly well aware that “in the scientific sense there is not such a thing as race. ….I as a politician need a conception which permits the order which has hitherto existed on historical bases to be abolished and an entirely new and antihistoric order enforced and given an intellectual basis.” Antisemitism, on the other hand, was functionally necessary as it was essential “to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.” (Hermann Rauschning, Cited in Yahil, 2000, p. 38) [Although the distinction is valid, it is debatable whether a satisfactory explanation for the decision to annihilate European Jewry, and the intense commitment to its implementation by various senior Nazi functionaries, can be advanced convincingly without postulating a biologically anchored race component to that segment of Hitler's Weltanschauung that was centred on Jewry. The written text is disembodied of affect. The quotation cited above is markedly dissonant with the audio and visual record of Hitler's elaboration of his views on Jewry and its potential fate. To ignore this, throws us back on contentions that Hitler's pronouncements on Jews were not significantly more radical than those of some other antisemites in the past, as has been argued by Yehuda Bauer and Hans Mommsen, or towards developing typologies of antisemitism, something which may, after all, be necessary, as is implicit most significantly in the work of Daniel Goldhagen, recognising the German, or Nazi variant, as a particularly virulent type.] Although racism was not, even in Hitler’s eyes, a
scientific concept, it was significant in transmuting a conflict that
was rooted on the one hand in the legacies of Christian ideology, and on
the other in particularistic social, economic, and political relations
between Jews and Christians, into a clash of irreconcilable cultural
entities. Race was located
in the genes; it could not be modified, only contained or eradicated.
Containment was always likely to be problematic and uncertain in
its results. Elimination would resolve the problem with finality. Although Hitler and the Nazi party did not invent antisemitism, they "radicalized and activated an antisemitism that was already existent-an antisemitism that was, in fact, dominant and continuous in German history. The innovation in Nazi anti-Jewish policy could be summarized as follows: Nazi anti-Semitism became political. It turned theory and ideology into practice. In Hitler’s words, “There is no making pacts with the Jews; there can only be the hard either-or. … Such a verdict was never passed on other enemies of the Nazis.” "(Bachrach, p.71) |