# Why did so many pre- WWII Europeans hate the Jews? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 28, 2009, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815 "2009-09-28T03:06:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/21 "2009-09-28T18:17:02Z")
And it really should be noted that a kind of cultural trend toward antisemitism and rounding Jews up and gassing them aren’t quite equivalent. Was it the King of Denmark, when told by the occupying forces that the Nuremberg Laws involving the wearing of the yellow star were going to be enforced in that country, informed the occupying general that the first to wear the star would be the king himself? ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/22 "2009-09-28T18:37:02Z")
> [@ZPG\_Zealot](#): > > Crucification was not an approved method of implementing the death penalty under Jewish religious law. The Romans (as in some low-ranking legionaire under the order of Pontius Pilate) killed him. However, when the gospels were written, the new religion wanted to appeal to the Romans, so the whole Pilate washing his hands and the Sanhedrin conspiring were written down to whitewash the Romans as much as possible. > [@](#): > > One thing I have always been curious about is if Jesus Christ’s death was so necessary to Christianity, why would the Christians be so angry over him being put to death as that was the fulfilment of his destiny? Prejudices don’t have to follow logic at all. And I think there’s the whole “new religion” inferiority complex: you believe you’ve found the light, shout your message from the rooftops, convinced that everybody else who hears it will also see the light. Then, when people stick to their old religion, you get angry at them. Mohammed was originally friendly towards Jews and Christian, later, when he was rebuffed, he got angry. Same with Martin Luther: he thought the Jews would see the light and convert to his new sect, so he was friendly, but when they ignored him, he wrote hate literature about them. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/23 "2009-09-28T18:46:39Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > And it really should be noted that a kind of cultural trend toward antisemitism and rounding Jews up and gassing them aren’t quite equivalent. Was it the King of Denmark, when told by the occupying forces that the Nuremberg Laws involving the wearing of the yellow star were going to be enforced in that country, informed the occupying general that the first to wear the star would be the king himself? I believe that this particular anecdote is mythical, but the Danish people did take a lot of care to resist rounding up Jews, and for those that were sent to the camps, monitoring their treatment. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/24 "2009-09-28T19:12:22Z")
According to the book ‘The War of the World’ [http://www.amazon.com/War-World-Niall-Ferguson/dp/0143112392/ref=sr\_1\_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254164983&sr=8-3](http://www.amazon.com/War-World-Niall-Ferguson/dp/0143112392/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254164983&sr=8-3), he spent some time analyzing Jewish persecution. According to his findings, Jewish persecution was worse in countries where Jews were assimilating more and less bad in countries where they did not assimilate as much. Don’t know the ramifications of that, but interesting. Might fit with Paul’s broad brushing. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/25 "2009-09-28T19:17:42Z")
> [@Teacake](#): > > From what you wrote, I fear that the task of enlightening you would take more energy and time than I can spare. In my life, that is, not just this evening. Well! That convinces me!! I guess Paul is a schmuck. I mean…look at your logic! ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/26 "2009-09-28T20:00:56Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Give it a shot. I am intrigued by your comments, and wish to wrap up some fish with your newsletter. 🙂 Well, I wasn’t sure if **Paul in Qatar** ’s post was a joke or not, but judging from his later post it might actually have been serious :eek: I think it’s these bits that are the most eyebrow-rasing: _I’m a teacher (and so sort of an intellectual). My Dad was a telephone man (and so a manual laborer). I see no connection between my father’s lot in life and mine._ – I’m not sure how that is different from the story of countless Europeans. My dad was a university-educated electronic engineer, his dad an NCO in the army. So what? _Europeans, to generalize, feel a person is what he is. This one is a German, that one a member of the proletariat. You cannot change what you are._ – this is not generalising, it’s just flat out untrue. _Also keep in mind European states are ethnically-based. We have a France so people can wear berets and eat stinky cheese. There is a Britain for people who like warm beer and deep-fried Mars bars._ – obviously tongue-in-cheek, so I’m not sure if there’s a serious claim behind it. Living in Qatar he has presumably travelled a bit and visited London, or Paris or wherever. I’m not sure how one could visit those places and come away with the impression of an ethnically homogenous country. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/27 "2009-09-28T20:13:42Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > Well, I wasn’t sure if **Paul in Qatar** ’s post was a joke or not, but judging from his later post it might actually have been serious Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Teacake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Teacake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teacake)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/28 "2009-09-28T20:20:16Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Give it a shot. I am intrigued by your comments, and wish to wrap up some fish with your newsletter. 🙂 How can I offer any enlightenment? I’m just an ignorant European. All my ancestors were peasants, and I am too. You can’t change what you are, you know. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/29 "2009-09-28T20:25:39Z")
> [@Teacake](#): > > How can I offer any enlightenment? I’m just an ignorant European. All my ancestors were peasants, and I am too. You can’t change what you are, you know. Hey, you needed help with the Big One. 🙂 I take it Europeans do not tend to think of themselves who they are rather than what they are. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Teacake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Teacake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teacake)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/30 "2009-09-28T20:51:58Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Hey, you needed help with the Big One. 🙂 > > I take it Europeans do not tend to think of themselves who they are rather than what they are. > Thanks. Which “Big One”? Do you mean _The_ Enlightenment? Because somehow, despite being a continent of hunter-gatherers, we managed that! 😉 No, Europeans do not think of themselves as being only “what they are”, as \*\*Paul \*\*asserts. My great-grandfather couldn’t even write his name. His son owned a factory (incidentally, not in the same country), his grandson has a Masters degree and is one of the most respected people in the world in his field (his books being the received and taught texts), and his grandchildren (just down this little branch) have five Bachelors degrees, a PhD, a medical doctorate, three teaching qualifications, two Masters degrees, and a raft of IT-type qualifications. As I said, I don’t have the energy or time to fight **Paul** ’s ignorance. For a start that’s simple enough for him, though, I could direct him to Wiki; he could look at the pages on American antisemitism, then have a look at some of the information about the actual treatment of Jews in Europe throughout the ages. He admitted he was generalising, and that he was using a very broad brush. However his information was misleading at best, and rather xenophobic in a flag-waving sort of way. And I hate to break it to him, but of course America is diverse. It’s because we peopled it… we, the Europeans. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/31 "2009-09-28T20:57:18Z")
It was the combination of religious persecution particular to the Jewish religion (and its relationship with Christianity), and a more generic hatred for “the other”. One interesting point is that racist angle (that would ultimately lead to the holocaust) was specifically created in the 1800s by anti-semites. It was become “un-PC” in polite western-European to persecute someone because of their religion, on the other prejudice against race still very trendy and “scientific”, so the was a conscious shift from anti-Semitism because “they killed Jesus”, to anti-Semitism because of the “scourge” of the “Semitic” race. In fact the term “anti-Semitism” originated in this period. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/32 "2009-09-28T21:08:33Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > And in the 1930s and 40s, there were signs in swimming pools on the East Coast that “Jews, Negroes and dogs” weren’t allowed. Certain clubs wouldn’t permit people of the wrong descent to join. And likewise for the prestigious “Ivy League” universities. The reason that the modern day colleges that are leaders in areas like Physics are the less historically prestigious ones such as MIT, Caltech, and Princeton, not the “Ivy League” ones that you would expect, are that pre-WW2 Jewish emigres such as Einstein were not really welcome at “Ivy League” schools. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/33 "2009-09-28T21:35:41Z")
Princeton is an Ivy League school. ---
**Author:** ![bizzwire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/958977/32.png) [@bizzwire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bizzwire)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/34 "2009-09-28T21:45:26Z")
My two cents: It was a kind of self-fulfilling mechanism. Step 1:Because they are “Ccannish”, make laws that forbid them from living anywhere except the Ghetto. Step 2: Accuse them of not wanting to assimilate Step 3: Forbid them from various trades, the ability to own land, and a university quota system, leaving only occupations to which Gentiles are forbidden or loath to do such as lending and trading. Step 4: Accuse them of being money-grubbing leaches. Lather, rinse, repeat. ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/35 "2009-09-28T22:06:46Z")
Paul in Qatar may have oversimplified in some parts, and overstated (slightly) in others, but the traditionalism and rigidity of Europeans vs the fluidity and love of novelty of Americans has been well established in thousands of books and articles. Sure Europe has become more like America in many ways, and America still wrestles with its own historic demons, but the differences Paul refers to are still present. ---
**Author:** ![Belowjob2.0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/36 "2009-09-28T22:14:37Z")
There’s a psych professor out here at Cal State Long Beach, Kevin McDonald, whose specialty is using evolutionary psychology to examine Jews in Europe and the States. His conclusion, in a nutshell (how apropos) is that anti-Semitism is all the Jews’ fault, because they’re bad people. [http://www.amazon.com/People-That-Shall-Dwell-Alone/dp/0595228380/ref=sr\_1\_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1254175806&sr=1-1-fkmr0](http://www.amazon.com/People-That-Shall-Dwell-Alone/dp/0595228380/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1254175806&sr=1-1-fkmr0) McDonald’s books are required reading in the white nationalist crowd. The Civil Rights movement, feminism, and third world immigration, in their view, are all the fault of the Jews. (Maybe Chief Pedant has read these books from cover to cover and wants to comment? ) ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/37 "2009-09-28T22:35:17Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > So Europeans saw and to a startlingly wide extent still see people are archetypes. Americans tend to see people as people. As demonstrated by the clear, rational, opposition to president Obama, which ENTIRELY centered on the issues he holds. Not about his descent and birthplace :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/38 "2009-09-28T23:23:41Z")
> [@Teacake](#): > > No, Europeans do not think of themselves as being only “what they are”, as \*\*Paul \*\*asserts. My great-grandfather couldn’t even write his name. I gathered from what he said that “what you are” meant a German or a Pole or French, and would therefor be more likely to think that people who dressed and spoke funny were bad. Americans considered what they’ve done, and think that somebody who dresses and talks funny could make his own way as they did. I presume the kid who called Mrs. Plant a “fucking Jew” in traffic in New Hampshire was an American of European heritage. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Uncertain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Uncertain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncertain)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/39 "2009-09-28T23:46:49Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > I believe that this particular anecdote is mythical, but the Danish people did take a lot of care to resist rounding up Jews, and for those that were sent to the camps, monitoring their treatment. Exactly. The story about the King and the yellow star is a myth, but the Danish government and the Danish people saved the majority of Jews in the country when the Nazis finally decided to round them up (warned them and got them to Sweden). ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2009, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815/40 "2009-09-29T00:27:40Z")
> [@Uncertain](#): > > Exactly. The story about the King and the yellow star is a myth, but the Danish government and the Danish people saved the majority of Jews in the country when the Nazis finally decided to round them up (warned them and got them to Sweden). So, what about this one: Near the end of WWII (The Big One) Hitler asks the Finns, “Why don’t you send us your Jews?” And the guy running Finland replies, “Why don’t you come get them?” 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-so-many-pre-wwii-europeans-hate-the-jews/511815.md?page=3)