Antisemitism in Europe
overview about antisemitism in Europe From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Antisemitism,[1] also known as Judeophobia,[2] has a long history in Europe.[3] The worst instance of antisemitism in Europe's history is the Holocaust.[4] The adjective of antisemitism is antisemitic. Those who hold antisemitic views are called antisemites.[5]
Overview
20th Century
The Holocaust
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The Holocaust was a genocide[6] committed by Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 during World War II. It was known as the Final Solution. The Nazis' plan was to rid Europe of Jews. They succeeded in killing up to 67% of Jews – at least 6,000,000.[4] The planning of the Holocaust was rooted in antisemitism.[4][7]
21st century
In a 2013 research of 5,847 Jews in Europe, 76% thought that antisemitism had increased in the previous five years, while 29% had thought about moving countries as they felt unsafe.[8] A 2023 ADL research found that as many as one-third of Western Europeans believed in stereotypes of Jews. This was reportedly worse in some eastern European countries, particularly Hungary (37%), Poland (35%) and Russia (26%).[9] In Eastern Europe, the level of antisemitism is found to be high.[10] The cause of persistent antisemitism in Europe is under debate.[11][12] A 2024 ADL research found that 46% of world adult population (around 2,200,000,000 people) held deeply entrenched antisemitic beliefs.[13] Notably, 82% of Greece's population believed that "Jews have too much power in the business world,"[14] while 40% of Belgium's population believed that "Jews have too much control over media and global affairs" and 61% believed that "Jews are only loyal to Israel."[14]
| Country | % population holding biases against Jews (95% confidence level)[15] | |
|---|---|---|
| Greece | 69 | |
| Armenia | 58 | |
| Poland | 45 | |
| Bulgaria | 44 | |
| Serbia | 42 | |
| Hungary | 41 | |
| Belarus | 38 | |
| France | 37 | |
| Azerbaijan | 37 | |
| Lithuania | 36 | |
| Romania | 35 | |
| Croatia | 33 | |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 32 | |
| Georgia | 32 | |
| Russia | 30 | |
| Moldova | 30 | |
| Spain | 29 | |
| Montenegro | 29 | |
| Latvia | 28 | |
| Austria | 28 | |
| Slovenia | 27 | |
| Belgium | 27 | |
| Germany | 27 | |
| Switzerland | 26 | |
| Estonia | 22 | |
| Portugal | 21 | |
| Ireland | 20 | |
| Italy | 20 | |
| Iceland | 16 | |
| Norway | 15 | |
| Finland | 15 | |
| Czech Republic | 13 | |
| Denmark | 9 | |
| United Kingdom | 8 | |
| Netherlands | 5 | |
| Sweden | 4 | |
Croatia
20th century
21st century
Croatian Wikipedia
Between 2009 and 2021, Croatian Wikipedia was controlled by a group of far-right administrators who promoted Holocaust denial by censoring[16][17] the war crimes of the pro-Nazi Ustaše-ruled Independent State of Croatia (NDH)[18] and blocking dozens of rule-abiding users for trying to remove the false content.[16]
Željko Jovanović, the Minister of Science of Croatia back then, also advised against the use of the Croatian Wikipedia.[19] The most serious violation by the far-right administrators was their anti-historical designation of the Jasenovac concentration camp, in which 77,000–99,000 were killed,[20] as a "collection camp".[16] Their Holocaust denial was condemned by scholars, officials, advocacy groups and media critics.[16]
Following a year-long investigation (2020–21) by the Wikimedia Foundation, several complicit users and administrators were either banned or demoted, with one of the administrators found to have consolidated his or her power with 80 sockpuppet accounts.[21]
Ireland
Overview
Ireland has been predominantly Catholic throughout history.[23] Just as other Catholic countries, antisemitism is deep-rooted in Ireland.[23]
Modern period
As per specialized historians, Irish Catholics played an active role in the Catholic Spanish Inquisition's persecution of Jews (1478–1834),[24] killing as many as 300,000 Jews over false charges of "crypto-Judaism",[25][26] a charge slapped on Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism.[25][26]
20th century
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, pro-Nazi sentiment was common among the Irish due to their dislike of the United Kingdom,[27] which was fighting Nazi Germany.[27]
World War II
In July 1940, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) praised Nazi Germany as the "friends and liberators of the Irish people" in a statement, with little to no opposition from the Irish public.[27][28] Meanwhile, the IRA worked with Nazi spies to plot attacks on British troops in Northern Ireland[27][28] and circulated materials accusing Éamon de Valera's neutral Irish government of being owned by "Jews and Freemasons".[27][28]
As per declassified MI5 documents, IRA leading figures Seán Russell and James O'Donovan – both veterans of the Irish War of Independence – were the main Irish contacts with Nazi Germany.[27][28] They got Nazi weapons, plotted joint attacks on British troops and discussed with Hitler a possible German invasion of Northern Ireland to facilitate Irish "reunification".[27][28]
As per Kurt Haller, an anti-Nazi German diplomat who testified in the Nuremberg Trials,[28]
James O'Donovan [...] asked for German support for the occupation of Northern Ireland [. ...] seemed most interested in obtaining delivery of weapons, ammunition and explosives.
As per Erwin von Lahousen, a Nazi German general who also testified,[28]
Frank Ryan[29] suggest that the German invasion of Britain would be an opportune moment for the seizure of Northern Ireland [. ...] Ryan had told [Edmund] Veesenmayer[30] that [Éamon] de Valera would support [...] provided he considered it a legitimate risk to take.
After Adolf Hitler's death on April 30, 1945, Éamon de Valera, the Prime Minister of Ireland, mourned the death of Hitler[27][31] with backing from the Irish parliament.[27][31] De Valera also denied reports of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as "anti-national propaganda", reportedly out of refusal to acknowledge that the Jews could have suffered more than the Irish.[32]
21st century
2010s
Since 2013,[33][34] a baseless theory, which claims that "Irish slaves" existed in 17th century North America before the arrival of African slaves, has been made popular by Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers[33][34] in both Ireland and the United States.[33][34] The theory is sometimes called the "Irish slaves myth". The myth reportedly originated from the book To Hell Or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland written by Irish journalist Seán O'Callaghan (1918–2000)[33][35] and published by The O'Brien Press in Dublin, Ireland.[35]
The myth has been widely condemned by scholars as a far-right conspiracy theory downplaying the suffering of African Americans in history,[33][34] who were enslaved until 1865, segregated until 1965 and systemically discriminated against until now.[36] Despite To Hell Or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland promoting the widely condemned far-right myth, the book is still on sale in the Sinn Féin Bookshop[37] run by the Irish nationalist Sinn Féin party.[37][38]
2020s
In spring 2024, antisemitism in Ireland reportedly worsened with the Israel–Hamas war's escalation, where antisemites felt justified to harass Jews under the guise of supporting Palestine, and some Irish Jewish community leaders were doubtful if Ireland was still safe[39] for the approximately 2,700 Jews – 0.054% of the 2023 Irish population[40] – in Ireland. In November 2024, it was revealed that textbooks teaching that
- the Jews "killed Jesus"
- Israel was "uniquely aggressive"
- the Auschwitz was a "prisoner of war camp" rather than an extermination camp
- Judaism "believed that violence and war are sometimes necessary"
were widely circulated in Irish schools[41] and shaping children's mind.[41] The findings were confirmed by the European Jewish Congress (EJC).[42] Meanwhile, the Government of Ireland has not responded to the matter, nor have any strong reactions been seen from the Irish public.[41]
Critique
David Collier, an Irish researcher in Middle East affairs,[43] noted that antisemitism among contemporary Irish is derived from[43]
- Religious antisemitism: Classic Christian belief that "Christians are the new Jews" as "the Jews killed Jesus"
- Political antisemitism:
- Popularity of the Irish nationalist Sinn Féin party whose founders promoted conspiracy theories about Jews
- Projection of anti-British sentiment onto Israel[44] due to the belief that "Britain gave the Jews Israel" is similar to the British settler colonialism in the history of Ireland.[45][46]
Spain
Middle Ages
Under the rule of Henry III of Castile and León (1390–1406), Jews were made to pick either baptism or death in the Iberian territories reconquered.[47]
Modern period
From 1478 to 1834, the Catholic Spanish Empire unleashed a systematic campaign of persecution of Jews, historically known as the Spanish Inquisition,[25][26] due to its racist belief that Jews who converted to Catholicism (conversos) were mostly faking as Christians,[25][26] including those forcibly converted following the Alhambra Decree, or the Edict of Expulsion.[25][47] As many as 300,000 Jews under Catholic Spanish rule were killed over false charges of "crypto-Judaism",[25][26] a charge slapped on Jews who were forcibly converted.[25][26]
21st century
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For the past decade, movements within Spain have emerged to rewrite the history of the Spanish Inquisition.[48] Members of the movements released a series of books, films, TV programs and mobile exhibitions[48] to beautify the Inquisition-associated Spanish history.[48]
In 2023, an ADL poll found that 26% of Spain's population held extensive antisemitic beliefs,[49] followed by Belgium (24%), France (17%), Germany (12%) and the UK (10%).[49]
In 2024, Spanish Jews make up 0.093% of Spain's population of 48,370,000. In April, the Observatory for Religious Freedom and Conscience found that at least 36 attacks had happened to Spanish Jews between 7 October 2023 and 19 April 2024, about six attacks per month.[50] In July, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that 78% of Spanish Jews saw antisemitism as a big problem in Spain.[51]
France
Classical antiquity
Jews have been living in France since the Roman times as one of the oldest diasporas in Europe. As France became Christianized in the late antiquity, Christian antisemitism shaped the region's culture.[52]
Middle Ages
Under the Germanic Frankish Merovingian dynasty between the 5th and 8th century, Jews were banned from working as public servants.[52] A succession of ecumenical councils also banned Jews from socializing with Christians or observing the shabbat over the unfounded fear that Judaism (the Jewish ethnoreligion) would influence Christians.[52]
11th century
Systematic persecutions of Jews intensified in the 11th century under the Capetian dynasty, when the King of France Robert the Pious attempted to kill all Jews who rejected Christian conversion.[52][53] Jews across the France were assaulted, tortured or burned at stakes.[52][53] The persecutions coincided with the destruction of the original Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in 1009, which was exploited by French Benedictine monk Rodulfus Glaber to spread rumors about Jewish "involvement" in the destruction.[54]
When the First Crusade happened in 1096, Jews were massacred by the crusaders across the Kingdom of France,[53][54] The events were seen by some historians as a series of genocidal massacres.[55] The massacres all happened with the Roman Catholic Church's tacit approval.[54][55]
Between the 1182 and 1394, at least 13 expulsion campaigns of Jews were ordered by the French monarchy,[56] during which dozens of Black Death-associated massacres of Jews happened.[57]
Modern period
Between the 15th century and 18th century, antisemitism in France waxed and waned.[58] Voltaire (1694–1778), a famous French philosopher, held biases against Jews that contributed to the legitimization of antisemitism in Western academia.[59][60] One of the instances of Voltaire's antisemitism was his insertion of an insult into his Dictionnaire philosophique for Jewish readers:[59]
You are calculating animals; try to be thinking animals.
Despite this, he was regarded as the champion of Enlightenment by Western leftists.[60]
19th century
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Antisemitism was widespread in 19th century France.[52] It was present across the political spectrum, with ancient stereotypes being phrased differently and perpetuated by their respective audience.[61] Jews were targeted for their otherness, observance of Judaism and alleged lack of loyalty or assimilation.[61]
Among the French far left, Jews were accused of being regressive agents of capitalism exploiting the French proletariat.[61] Among the French far right, Jews were accused of being subversive agents of communism undermining the traditional Catholic culture.[61] Meanwhile, both the far left and far right saw Jews as undesirable under French nationalism, which prioritized national unity over minority existence.[61][62]
Between 1882 and 1885, three antisemitic publications existed in France: L'Anti-Juif, L'Anti-Sémitique, and Le Péril sociale.[52] In 1886, French politician Edouard Drumont published the 1,200-page tract La France juive ("Jewish France"), accusing Jews of masterminding capitalism, and calling for a race war between non-Jewish "Aryans" and Jewish "Semites". The tract was very popular in France and reprinted for 140 times within the first two years of publication.[59]
The wave of antisemitism peaked in the deeply divisive Dreyfus affair in 1894, when Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jewish artillery officer, was falsely convicted of treason.[62] Dreyfus was not vindicated until 1906.[61][62]
20th century
World War II
On 22 June 1940, France surrendered to Nazi Germany upon military defeat and was partitioned into the German-occupied zone, Italian-occupied zone and Vichy France – a rump state in southern France managed by pro-Nazi French collaborators.[63] Under Vichy France's leaders Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval, the Statut des Juifs ("Jewish Statute") – modelled after the Nazi German Nuremberg Laws – was passed between October 1940 and June 1941 to ban Jews from all jobs.[63]
Just as in Nazi Germany, such legal persecution escalated to the deportation of Jews to extermination camps,[63] one of the worst instances of which was the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup on 16–17 July 1942 voluntarily conducted by the Vichy French police.[63] In total, 77,000 (33%) Jews living in France were killed in extermination camps.[4][63]
Post-war period
Antisemitism in post-war France mainly took the form of Holocaust denial and radical anti-Zionism. Pierre Guillaume, an ultra-left activist deemed an "anarcho-Marxist", published books denying the Holocaust as a "distraction from class struggle playing into the hands of Zionism and Stalinism."[64]
Guillaume's views were co-opted by the French far right,[64] sharing similar radical anti-Zionism, comparing the Holocaust to the Judean massacres of the Canaanites[64] or the Native American genocide,[65] and accusing Jews of exploiting the Holocaust to extort compensations from European countries.[66]
A number of influential French Holocaust deniers emerged, such as Claude Autant-Lara,[65] Maurice Bardèche,[66] Louis-Ferdinand Céline,[67] Paul Rassinier,[68] François Duprat,[69] Serge Thion,[70] Robert Faurisson,[71] Dieudonné M'bala M'bala[72] and Jean-François Jalkh.[73]
21st century
Antisemitism is still common in 21st century France,[74] with Jews and synagogues regularly attacked.[74] A report by Tel Aviv University and the ADL found a spike in antisemitic incidents from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023, 74% of which happened following 7 October 2023.[75] As per the Statista, 57.4% of 2023 antisemitic incidents happened in Paris.[76]
One of the most serious antisemitic incidents involved a 12-year-old Jewish girl being gang-raped by several boys hurling antisemitic insults and death threats.[77] Some French Jews reported the need to adopt fake names and wear keffiyehs to pretend as Muslims in order to minimize danger.[78]
Poland
Romania
Holocaust distortion
Under communism (1947 – 1989)
Under Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist rule,[79][80] Romania's role in the Holocaust was officially denied. It was blamed entirely on the German and Hungarian fascists.[81] Romanians were taught about the "heroic anti-fascist resistance," with an emphasis on the anti-Nazi battles fought following Romania defection to the Allies. Many former subordinates of Ion Antonescu served in the secret police of Nicolae Ceaușescu[81] and to help him oppress Romanians.[79][80]
Meanwhile, Nicolae Ceaușescu reportedly believed in lies about Jews, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and defined Jew as a "money-changer" and an "extortionist" in an official English–Romanian dictionary.[82]
Post-communist age (1989 – )
Since the fall of Ceaușescu's communist regime,[79][80] a systematic effort to whitewash the war criminals, especially Ion Antonescu, has been observed by scholars. Antonescu is praised by some so-called historians as a hero who waged a "holy war against Bolshevism."[81] Acts of Holocaust denial[83] by politicians occurred from time to time, notable of whom include Ion Iliescu, the former President of Romania (2000–2004). He made similar claims to those of Ceaușescu that there was "no Holocaust within Romania" and that the Poles, Jews and communists "were treated equally," while denying the Romanian role in the Holocaust and the verified Romanian Jewish death toll.[81]
An international inquiry, led by Romanian-American Jewish writer Elie Wiesel, identified all the evidence of Romania's role in the Holocaust. The Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania (Romanian: Institutul Național pentru Studierea Holocaustului din România „Elie Wiesel”, INSHR), a state-funded Holocaust research center, was also founded in 2005.[84]
In November 2021, the Romanian parliament passed a law, by a large majority, to require the teaching of the Holocaust and Jewish history from 2023. The only group opposing it was the nationalist party Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). The AUR was condemned by the INSHR.[85] Since September 2023, the Holocaust and Jewish history have become part of the high school curriculum in Romania.[86][87]
Germany
20th century
21st century
2010s
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A 2017 Bielefeld University's research reported that those identified with the far left and far right committed roughly the same proportion of antisemitic hate crimes, with most perpetrators found to be individuals of Muslim background.[88] The research was echoed by Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which asserted that certain Islamist groups' antisemitic rhetoric significantly challenged Germany's peaceful and tolerant society.[89] In a follow-up EU research in 2018, 41% of antisemitic attacks were found to have been committed by Islamic extremists, 20% by those identified with the far right and 16% by the far left.[90]
2020s
On 18 October 2023, 11 days following the Hamas-led October 7 massacre which killed over 1,200 in a day, a Berlin synagogue was firebombed with molotov cocktails by two masked men.[91] Official statistics also showed a rapid rise in antisemitic hate crimes in the months following the October 7 massacre.[92]
On 2 February 2024, a pro-Palestinian Berlin undergraduate beat a Jewish classmate to the point of hospitalization following an argument over the Israel–Hamas war. The German police reported that the Jewish student was punched and kicked repeatedly on the floor, suffering facial fractures.[93] The victim is the grandson of Amitzur Shapira, an Israeli athletics coach murdered by the Black September terrorists in the 1972 Munich massacre.[93] In May 2024, some Jewish parents from suburban Berlin transferred their kids to Jewish schools in Mitte, many of which guarded by police and enclosed walls, due to increasing antisemitic violence in Berlin.[94] In June 2024, a young Israeli couple was assaulted in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz after being heard speaking Hebrew. The suspect shouted abuses, threw a bottle and a chair at them and beat them on the floor.[95]
On 5 September 2024, the 52nd anniversary of the 1972 Munich massacre, a suspected terrorist opened fire at the Israeli consulate and the neighboring Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism before being shot dead by police.[96] On 7 October 2024, 10 Holocaust memorial stones were torn from their spots. The day coincided with the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre.[97]
In February 2025, a Jewish student at the Goethe University in Frankfurt has reportedly become a target of a hate campaign that resulted in physical injuries and death threats, including anonymous messages saying "Inshallah, you will be shot…You should die…Your whole f***ing Israel…"[98] The victim reportedly filed over 60 police reports, which merely resulted in some of her harassers being fined for €300.[98] Some of the harassers are reportedly associated with pro-Palestinian protests' organizers,[98] with little to no condemnation from other left-wing activists.[98]
Responses
In June 2024, the Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) reported that there were 4,782 antisemitic incidents in 2023,[99][100] an 80% rise as compared to 2022,[99][100] most of which happened following the October 7 massacre.[99][100] In October 2024, Felix Klein, the German Commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight against Antisemitism, asserted that "open and aggressive antisemitism has been stronger than at any time since 1945."[101]
On 6 November 2024, the German lower house of parliament passed a non-binding resolution to pledge the end of funding to groups that "spread antisemitism, question Israel's right to exist, call for a boycott of Israel or actively support the BDS movement."[102] The resolution enjoyed cross-party support, but faced opposition from MPs of left-wing populist parties like the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and Die Linke (Left Party),[102] while the BDS movement itself was designated as antisemitic by the German government in 2019[103] and a threat of "suspected extremism" by the German intelligence agency in 2024.[104]
Armenia
Overview
58% of the population[15] of Armenia[106][107] (a Caucasian country allied with Russia,[108] China,[109] Iran[110] and Syria under Bashar al-Assad[111] who killed over 400,000 Syrians[112][113]) are found to be hostile to Jews, including 62% of those aged 18–34. The percentages are the highest in Eastern Europe, making Armenia statistically the most antisemitic Eastern European country.[15] Garegin Nzhdeh (1886–1955), an Armenian nationalist who recruited thousands of Armenians to fight for Nazi Germany, is still popular among Armenians.[114][115]
20th century
From the 1930s through the Holocaust, Armenian-American media, including but not limited to the Hairenik,[116][117] fully backed Adolf Hitler and defended the Holocaust as a "necessary surgical operation" by demonizing Jews as "poisonous elements",[116][117] while 20,000 Armenian Nazi volunteers[117][118] hunted for Jews and other "undesirables" on behalf of the Nazi German army.[117][119]
21st century
Despite such history, hundreds of statues have been erected across Armenia in honor of Garegin Nzhdeh.[114][115] Meanwhile, the only synagogue in Armenia's capital Yerevan was attacked four times in a row between 7 October 2023 and 11 June 2024.[120] Members of the Marxist-Leninist militant[105] front Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia[121] (ASALA) claimed responsibility for the attacks, some of which involved the synagogue being set on fire.[122]
Related pages
References
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