Every religious group has suffered a time when their religion was not considered to be popular or right.  Out of all of these religious groups that have suffered, no one group has suffered so much as that  of the Jewish religion.  They have been exiled from almost every country that they have ever inhabited, beginning with Israel, and leading all the was up to Germany, France, Spain, England, and Russia.  Not only have they been exiled but also they have suffered through torture, punishment, and murder.  Thus, because of the history of the religion, the Jewish people have become a very resilient people.  They have survived thousands of years carrying their religion with them from one country to the next and never loosing their faith.  They have traveled form Eastern Europe, to the United States and have finally managed today to settle comfortable all over North America.  The Jewish religion has suffered tremendously throughout the centuries, and unfortunately it did not become any easier for them during the twentieth century.
     The Jewish people's problems began long before the Common Era; they were persecuted long ago by King Nebuchadnezzer.  Because of the treaty that was signed with King Nebuchadnezzer the Jews were uprooted from their home in Jerusalem and were forced into exile in the city of Babylon.  The Jews were not treated poorly, though they were bitter because of being taken away form their beloved Jerusalem.  Due to this bitterness they became more intensely Jewish than ever before.  (1)
     After seventy years of exile the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem.  Most of them gave up this option and elected to stay in Babylon.  Those who stay in Babylon became merchants, traders, and bankers, thus beginning their long history in these professions.  They prospered greatly due to the extended trade routes that existed throughout this region.  (1)
     The peace the Jews experienced during this era after the exile continued for three hundred years.   After this their problems were minimal up to the time of the Crusades.  Because of the conflict between Christianity and Islam Jews suffered immeasurably, leading ultimately to two long centuries of persecution and expulsion.  In the year 1095 a sermon was preached telling the Christians to regain control of the holy lands.  Gangs would attack the Jewish communities, destroying their cities and torturing the people who lived in them.  The Jews were such a threat because they did not believe in Jesus Christ a s the Son of God and were therefore non-Christian believers.  A second wave of crusades emerged in 1146 and 1189.  Riots against Jews even began to emerge through England.  The crusades thus lead to Jews becoming the hated religious sect and they were cast out of almost every country throughout Europe.  (2)  Jews thus began to move and were forced into other countries, countries where they were also not wanted.
     Within Spain, for a time Jews were accepted as productive and unthreatening members of society.  This continued until it was decided that the Jewish community was not doing what was expected of them, at which time the Inquisition began.  Jews had become accepted because they practiced and accepted the Christian faith in the public eye, however in private they secretly practiced Judaism.  In 1479 Isabella married Ferdinand in Spain, this marriage was what ultimately led to the Spanish Inquisition.  The idea behind the Inquisition was to expose heretics.  The first inquisition was held in 1481 and ended up leaving six men and women of the Jewish religion buried alive.  30,000 Jewish people's property was seized and they were burned at the stake during the first twenty years of the Inquisition.  Ironically the most feared and evil inquisitor, Fra Tomas de Torquemada, was of Jewish decent.  Eventually the inquisition lead to the expulsion of all Jews from Spain.  In 1492, four months after the Jews were asked to leave Spain, between 100.000 and 150,000 Jews exited Spain.  As the Jews left Spain they took refuge in many different countries, North Africa and the Ottoman Empire were two such countries.  Others tried to move to Sicily only to discover that they were exiled from that country as well.  Because of this some took up residence in Naples but most ended up traveling to Portugal.  Eventually too the Jews were cast out Portugal, therefore the Jewish community only continued in the eastern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe.  (2)  As if being thrown out of Spain was not enough the Jews were exiled from England and France as well.  The Jews continued to be persecuted in this way all the way through the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.  In fact they were even persecuted throughout the Second World War.
     The anti-Semitic actions which transpired in Germany during Hitler's rein were by no means considered to be a new phenomenon for Europe.  Previous to the Enlightenment, a majority of the Jewish population was forced by law to reside in particular areas, which were referred to as ghettoes.  The Enlightenment was revolutionary for the Jewish population because it lead to many areas of Europe, to grant the Jews legal equality.  In fact, by the nineteenth century Jews were a large part of the cultural and economic progress of the times.  However, the Europeans’ irrational fears of the Jews had not been forgotten.  Throughout the nineteenth century anti-Semitic outrages were frequent.  In Russia there were murderous mob attacks on Jews, and the French were under the impression that the Jews were murdering Christian children in their rituals. (5)  many people felt threatened by the Jewish race, they feared foreign intrusion into their homes and nations.  it is easy to see how a strong leader, such as Hitler, was able to take advantage of peoples emotions and utilize their fear to unite them, he plotted them against one enemy, who they could attribute as the the cause for everything they despised.
     After the foundation of the German empire, Germany experienced rapid cultural and economic change.  The Germans valued their traditional nation, and associated the Jews with the changes that came with rapid industrialization.  During this period there was a large movement of Jewish immigrants from Russia to Germany.  They searched for a better life where they could openly participate in their own religion and culture. (5)  Racial-Nationalism was becoming more and more prevalent in the German culture with time.  Many Germans blamed their defeat in world War I, on the Jewish population.  They believed the Jews were leading a World conspiracy.  Following World War I, there was an intensified commitment to racial nationalism.  The German’s strong belief in the superiority of their own race gave way to an exclusive form of government.  The state could take away the rights of anyone who they believed were not deserving.
     It was during this period that Adolf Hitler was raised.  He fought for Germany during World War I.  Following Germany's defeat, Hitler, like many others, had a new intensified commitment to racial nationalism.  He joined a small extremist group called the National Socialist German Workers party (Nazi), and very quickly became their leader.  In November 1923, he lead an attempt to overthrow the state government in Bavaria.  This was the first part of his plan to defeat the Weimar Republic.  Although the attack was not successful and Hitler was arrested, his power was only brewing.  During his term in jail he replotted his plan.  He was going to destroy the Weimar Republic through manipulation of the legal system.  He used the instruments of democracy to destroy the republic and create a totalitarian state. (4)  He had become a dictator with unlimited power.
 “Hitler's thought comprised a patchwork of nineteenth century anti-Semitic, Volkish, Social Darwinism, anti-Democratic, and anti-Marxist ideas.  (4-p.558)”  He divided the world into superior and inferior races, which he believed were struggling over their own survival.  Hitler saw the Aryan race as the originator and carrier of civilization.  He is quoted to have said, “Two worlds face one another, the men of God and the men of Satan!  The Jew is the anti-man, the creature of another god.  He must have come from another root of the human race.  I set the Aryan and the Jew over and against each other.  (4-p.559)”  Hitler blamed everything he despised on the jews.  He knew that his ideas would never work without more support from the German population.  So, he waited for an opportunity that would allow his movement to gain support from a population which needed a leader to turn to.  The Great Depression provided just the type of crisis he was waiting for.  He aimed his propaganda at the peoples emotions.  He manipulated people by taking advantage of their primitive feelings.  Hitler was aware of the German's dislike of the Jew, because he was raised under the influence of these feelings.  He knew that he could gain peoples support by teaching that the Jews were the underlying reason behind many of their problems.  Hitler was such a powerful leader that he placed the Jews as the German's enemy and people felt as if, he was giving them permission to take their fear of the Jews out into the open.  One man is quoted to have said about Hitler, “The intense will of the man, the passion of his sincerity seemed to flow from him into me.  I experienced an exaltation that could be linked only to religious conversation.  (4-p.557)”  This idea that there was only one enemy, allowed a tight unity to form among the German population against the enemy.  Hitler appealed to the discontented and disillusioned, from all areas of the population.  Felix Goldbann, a German-Jewish writer commented, “The present-day politicized racial anti-Semitism is the embodiment of myth,...nothing is discussed...only felt,...nothing is pondered critically, logically or reasonably,...only inwardly perceived, surmised...We are apparently the last (heirs) of the Enlightenment.  (4-p.559)”
     Hitler initially set after political power so that he could prepare the German nation for war.  It has been said that World War II was Hitler's war.  He was playing out his plan that he had devised years ago, while he was in prison.  It was during World War II that Hitler began his systematic extermination of the inferior.  This was organized murder that was supported by the state and the military.  The individuals who were actually performing the murders believed they were removing subhumans who threatened the German nation. (5)  Hitler had mind washed people into believing that this type of mass murdering was justifiable.  Initially he devised labor camps where he would send individuals who opposed his fascist ideas, and Jews.  The conditions in these camps were so bad that it is hard to describe them.  The prisoners were treated inhumanly.  They were forced to do brutal labor but were feed so little that their life expectancy was only a few months.  Many of the deaths in the concentration camps were a result of starvation and in turn dysfunction of the immune system.  The Nazi's could blame a vast number of the deaths in these camps on diseases such as pneumonia.  Often times the German population was unaware of how bad these conditions were.  They say large numbers of Jews being removed and taken away.  They did not know exactly what was happening to these people and they were informed that people who had died had died of diseases.  None of the Germans were aware threat the Jews were being gassed to death in large rooms that they believed to be bath houses.  That they were being poisoned by carbon monoxide gas on busses, and also that they were being taken out in large groups and being shot.  The German population feared for their freedom and their lives, they would watch people, who had opposed the Nazis, disappear and never return.  They feared what might happen if they opposed anything the Nazis were doing.  (2)
     In 1939, 300,000 Jews had been eliminated from the German community.  Throughout Europe, the Nazi regime had killed between five and six million Jews during World War II.  Due to the terror of the Nazi's many Jews escaped from Europe into the United States.  When they arrived here they joined the already booming community of Jews living all throughout the country.  In total today there are more Jewish people in New York than there are in any other country in the world.  The Jewish population still exists in Europe, though it is dispersed.  There are still Jews living in Romania and in Russia.  Next to these places France has a fairly high Jewish population.   (2)  It was clear that before Hitler there was an irrational dislike for the Jews in Europe.  However, there is little to no evidence that this type of genocide would have occurred without Hitler's manipulation.  It is true that not all of the victims were Jews, but all jews were victims.  Elie Wiesel was a survivor of auschwitz, who speaks out about how important it is to remember.  “We remember Aushchwitz and all that it symbolizes because we believe that, in spit of the past and its horrors, the world is worthy of salvation; and salvation, like redemption can be found only in memory.  (5-p.396)  The Jewish faith has triumphed and still exists today despite all of its problems in the past. Many religions would have fallen and ceased to exist under this kind of persecution.  To the Jewish believer this is perhaps because they are the ‘chosen people.’  This religion continues to prove its strength and resilience even today and will continue to do so.

1)  Fast, Howard.  The Jews.  The Dial Press, Inc., New York:1968.
2)  Goldberg, David J.  The Jewish People, A History and Their Religion.  Viking, New York:   87.
3)  Kantor, Mattis.  The Jewish Time Line Encyclopedia.  Jason Aronson Inc., New Jersey:  1992.
4)  Perry, Marvin.  Western Civilization A Brief History (third edition).  Houghton Mifflin  Company, New York:  1997.
5)  Perry, Marvin.  Peden, Joseph R. Von Laue, Theodore H.  Sources of the Western Tradition  third edition).  Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston:  1995.