Christians: Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox - Were Paving the Road to Auschwitz Centuries Before the Nazis
http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/church/persecution/
Christian Persecution of Jews Over the Centuries
1648-1649 Christians under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytsky rampaged through the towns and villages of Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Galicia, and White Russia, murdering and torturing an estimated 90,000-100,000 Jews, and destroying at least 100 Jewish communities. Dozens of synagogues are burned down. Jews are hanged from trees alongside pigs and dogs.
In 18th century, the Christian churches continue to preach that the Jews are guilty of deicide and are still being punished by God by not having their own homeland, and by being deprived of citizenship in the countries where they live. Churches continue to present public Passion plays, in which Jews are portrayed as the bloodthirsty killers of Jesus.
The bogus saints Simon of Trent and Little Hugh of Norwich, bogus victims of cruel Jews, are still venerated. The image of the Judensau still decorates churches and cathedrals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judensau
Pamphlets, broadsheets, and books continue to demonize Jews. Even though Jews have been mingling with non-Jews since ancient times, cartoons show them with stereotyped racial features, and as cruel and bloodthirsty.
Most towns still compel Jews to live in ghettos. Most countries still bar Jews from most professions. Most universities still forbid Jewish students. Some towns still compel Jews to wear a badge of infamy. Most countries still forbid Jews from holding public office. Most guilds of craftsmen and artisans still exclude Jews. A few governments begin to grant the Jews some civil rights, but even some of the more enlightened European writers who have broken with the Church, like Rousseau and Voltaire repeat the usual slanders against the Jews.
1710 Johann Eisenmenger publishes Judaism Exposed, a two-volume work in which he repeats every lie, every slander, every vicious stereotype that the Christians have propagated.
1712 Christians in Sandomierz accuse the Jews of ritual blood murder, and expel them from the city.
1720 Christians in Grodno accuse a Jew of murdering a little girl. He is executed.
1720 Madrid. The Catholic Inquisition burns five conversos at the stake.
1726 Lisbon. The Catholic Inquisition burns a converso at the stake.
1727 Catherine the Great expels all Jews from Ukraine.
1728 Poland. A converted Jew in Lvov decides to return to his faith. All the Jews of Lvov are arrested, but most manage to escape. Joshua Reizes commits suicide, and his brother Chaim is tortured, and then burned at the stake with his brother’s corpse.
1737 Lisbon. The Catholic Inquisition burns the converso Antonio Jose da Silva at the stake.
1740-1760 The Orthodox Christian Haidamaks massacre Jews in Polish-ruled Ukraine, including 2,000 in the city of Uman in 1768.
1744 The Christians of Prague falsely accuse the Jews treason, and expel them from the city.
1744 Frederick The Great permits only ten Jewish families to remain in Breslau, and the rest are expelled.
1744 Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa orders the expulsion of all Jews from the province of Bohemia.
1746 The city of Dresden forbids any Jews from moving to the city. Those who remain must pay a poll-tax, and they may not build a synagogue.
1746 Lisbon. The Catholic Inquisition burns three conversos at the stake.
1749 The city of Dresden raises the poll-tax on Jews, and dozens who cannot pay are compelled to leave.
1750 Frederick the Great rules that Jewish families in Berlin with more than one son must leave the city.
1772 The city of Dresden again raises the poll-tax on Jews, and again more who cannot pay are compelled to leave. The only occupation permitted to those who remain is selling old clothes and rags.
1750 Frederick the Great passes a law which denies most Jews in Prussia hereditary rights of residence; the right to join craft and merchant guilds; and the right to sell wool, brandy, wines, leather, or tobacco.
1753 When a Bill is proposed in the English Parliament to give the Jews civil rights, it is objected that Jews do not deserve such rights because of their guilt of deicide; because it is not fitting for a Christian government to treat Jews kindly; because the presence of Jews will increase the number of deists and atheist; and because if the Jews are permitted to thrive in England, they will take over the government and forcibly convert the Christians to Judaism.
1775-1799 Pope Pius VI rules that Jews living in the Papal States be compelled to listen to antisemitic sermons. He also rules that if a Catholic kidnaps a Jewish child and performs the rite of baptism, the Church then has the right to take the child from its parents.
1782 All the Jews of Russia are compelled by law to move into towns. They may no longer live in villages, or engage in farming.
1783 Friedrich Traugott Hartmann writes and publishes an antisemitic pamphlet arguing that the Jews of Austria should only be granted civil rights if they convert to Christianity.
1790 Christians accuse Jews of ritual blood murder in Grodno. Rabbi Eleazar ben Solomon is executed.
1791 Karl Wilhelm Grattenauer writes in his antisemitic pamphlet, On the Physical and Moral Attributes of Today’s Jews: “The Jews are a very singular race….Why suffer among us a horde of people whose character is a mix of all the evils and failings that exist in humanity?”
1791 All the Jews of Russia are compelled to move to an area called the Pale of Settlement.
1795 Ernst von Kortum writes in his antisemitic tract, On Judaism and the Jews, that the Jews should not be granted civil rights, because they are by nature “too lazy and too weak to choose an occupation that requires strength and perseverance.”
http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/church/persecution/after.html
European anti-Semitism after 1800
The antipathies of Poles, Germans, Russians and others against Jews are often explained as if they were religiously based in the patristic and medieval manner. From the early 19th century on, however, anti-Jewish sentiment of Catholic and Protestant Europe, itself increasingly secularized, had other roots no less mythical. The proper term for it is anti-Semitism. Its target was Jewish ethnicity. It was primarily politically and economically motivated. Demagogues, however, were only too happy to put the ancient Christian rhetoric of anti-Judaism in its service.
Germany was populated with more Jews than any country in Western Europe when Hitler came to power. It also had the same ugly heritage of anti-Jewish sentiment as all Christian Europe. The short-lived Weimar Republic could not deliver Germany from the severe economic hardships it experienced after World War I. Jews had been the Republic’s strong supporters and a few of them were the architects of its constitution, a fact that Hitler capitalized upon. Huge inflation in 1923 and the depression of 1929 increased Germany’s problems. Some leading capitalist families, gentile and Jewish, managed to escape these problems, but the eyes of the angry populace were trained on the Jews rather than the gentiles.
