For centuries, Jewish people in Europe have faced discrimination and persecution, often rooted in religious prejudice. Early forms of antisemitism included holding Jews collectively responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. Throughout the Middle Ages, Jews were frequently segregated, forced to reside in ghettos, and barred from certain professions. In times of social upheaval, they were often scapegoated and blamed for societal problems. A stark example is during the plague pandemic of the 14th century, where Jews were unjustly accused and suffered expulsions and violence. In 19th-century Russia, following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, pogroms erupted, leading to the mistreatment and murder of Jewish communities. The rise of racial ideologies in the 19th century further fueled antisemitism, propagating the false notion that Jews constituted a separate and inferior race, alien to the national identity of European nations.
Following Germany’s defeat in World War I in 1918, right-wing extremist groups scapegoated Jews for the nation’s loss. They falsely accused Jews of being both capitalist exploiters, profiting at the expense of ordinary citizens, and simultaneously, communist revolutionaries seeking global domination. These contradictory accusations reveal the irrational and deeply ingrained nature of antisemitism.
However, the progression from historical antisemitism to the Holocaust was not a predetermined path. While Adolf Hitler, in his book Mein Kampf and numerous speeches, openly expressed his virulent hatred of Jews and his desire to remove them from Germany, his initial plans did not explicitly include mass murder. The Holocaust emerged as the culmination of a series of escalating decisions and actions, shaped by evolving circumstances and a radicalizing political climate.
In 1938, Polish Jews residing in Germany were expelled, and by 1940, German Jews were deported to occupied Poland and France. Initially, the Nazi regime’s focus was on expulsion and displacement, not systematic extermination. It was only after the outbreak of World War II that the Nazi leadership began to conceive and implement the systematic murder of European Jews. This shift was driven by various factors, including initiatives from within the Nazi bureaucracy seeking “radical solutions,” competition between different Nazi agencies pushing for increasingly extreme measures against Jews, and, ultimately, the unwavering will and final decisions of Adolf Hitler. The Holocaust, therefore, represents a horrific event rooted in centuries of antisemitism, culminating in a genocide driven by Nazi ideology and a series of escalating decisions made during wartime.
