Post
by Speedo » Mon Apr 02, 2012 10:36 am
The thing to remember about anti-semitism is that is what not created by propaganda. It has been around for as long as other religions have banned usury, AKA money lending. The Jews were the only ones who could, and consequently got very rich while everybody else became jealous. Over time, this jealousy translated into more generalised dislike of Jews. Regular pogroms (essentially informal murder on a medium scale, perhaps murdering a village or community of jews) became normalised and anti-semitism institutionalised over a millennium or so. Ironically, the most organised anti-semitic regime, the Nazi one, dealt a final blow to the acceptability of anti-semitism.
As some of you may already know, I am a Jew (legally speaking at least, I've only been to Synagogue about once in the last year). My family came over from Latvia and Poland at the beginning of the 20th Century, avoiding the very worst of the anti-semitism and the holocaust. The few strands of family who remained over there perished in Aushwitz, we believe (with the exception of one who we only found out about when the genealogists were finding her family after her death in Paris in 2008. She is, however, listed as a victim on the Paris Holocaust memorial).
To pin down the origins of the holocaust is, frankly, impossible. It was a terrible price to pay for the end of institutionalised anti-semitism, ironic as that subsequent turn of events are.
I had the first custom w***