The rise and endurance of anti-Semitism is nearly as long as recorded history. Its height occurred from 1939-1945, which marked the duration of World War II and the Holocaust, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party killed approximately six million Jews. The devastation took a toll on the surviving Jewish population, with their houses and their lives taken away from them. Anti-Semitism has haunted Jews since the end of the Holocaust, and it’s something they cannot seem to escape, even in modern-day Germany and around the world. The continued hate stems from long-standing views passed down to the younger generations, allowing anti-Semitism to thrive in today's society. Children are taught to live with a sense of hatred and distrust toward Jews just as their parents were raised with those same views. Jews were impacted post-World War II in Germany by many Germans maintaining anti-Semitic beliefs and values, and allowing those to be taught in their schools. Jews, alienated and discriminated against due to their ethnic backgrounds, couldn’t return to their former homes following World War II and had few places to emigrate to as communities and nations did not welcome them.
Anti-Semitism is an ongoing conservation for people around in and around Germany. The anti-Semitic views began way before World War II, but reached their peak during Hitler’s reign. Jews were discriminated against in public places, and at times were not allowed to be seen walking the streets. Jews had thrived in their communities that weren’t actually considered theirs due to them being owned by other groups. “Prohibited by cruel and unjust laws from other occupations, they devoted themselves with characteristics energy and industry to the sole pursuits open to them. Against every obstacle they succeeded”.1 They faced excessive amounts of hate and doubt, yet as a community were able to succeed. The hatred from the Germans and others around the world, who wanted to believe in stereotypes, established the need for Jews to live and work as their own community early on. Being a strong group of people, they wouldn’t allow for the discrimination and horrid acts to affect them as a community, leaning on each other to persevere as much as possible. “Before Hitler’s regime launches the wartime genocide, political anti-Semitism in central Europe rose to levels of destructiveness unprecedented in modern history”.2 The Jews were humiliated in public and their rights were stripped from them, because in Hitler’s eyes, the Germans were seen as the superior race and Jews were seen as subhuman. Nazi Germany anti-Semitism was the most destructive to the Jewish communities. There had been similar issues in other European countries, but Germany proved to be the root of the problem.
The Holocaust was unexplainably devastating for Jewish communities and their families as everything they had, and had once known, was stripped from them. Families were ripped apart as Hitler and his Nazi Party made it their mission rid Germany and the world of all Jews. They moved them into concentration camps, where they were either killed right away or became laborers with extreme working conditions that eventually killed them. “…these dead are not just a statistic of six million Jews who perished, but real men, women, and children who had names, lives, hopes and dreams…”.3 Many people tend to look at the statistical side of the Holocaust – the overall numbers of people who perished — rather than the elimination of a normal group of people who face continuous hate. Just like everyone else, the Jewish population wanted to do great things with their lives but were stripped of any kind of dream prior to and during Hitler’s reign. The hatred toward Jews was based on nothing but discrimination and prejudice from the Germans ruled by the Nazi Party and its propaganda machine. Although the Jews faced the worst of the hate in Germany, many other European countries felt that same way, following the negative stereotypes, making the same jokes and continuing the discrimination toward Jews. “Despite the evidence presented at the Nuremburg war crimes trials, there are widespread continuing attempts to deny the murder of millions of Jews during World War 2…”.4 The proof and extreme documentation of the horrid events that the Jews faced during World War II seems indisputable, yet authors and white Supremacists continue to doubt and discount the experience that Jews not only claimed they went through, but what the evidence – eyewitnesses, photos and video — show. They were placed in inhumane camps, forced into gas chambers to be killed and bunkers where a maximum occupancy for the living did not exist. “…which he depicted as a benign, humane prison camp, with no such things as gas chambers”.5 There are records of millions dying in these inhumane camps, yet Nazis claimed such horrors did not exist, because they worked at the camps and wanted to invalidate the Jews’ experiences.
Phases come and go, but anti-Semitism is one that the Jews can’t escape. The hatred is alive and continues to thrive in Germany, throughout Europe and in the United States, which has seen a rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes since the 2016 election. The majority of Europeans agree that anti-Semitism is an ongoing problem, but a strong minority still believe their feelings toward Jews are justified with how the Jewish population acts. Those who have grown up with those negative beliefs have tended to hold onto them and have no problem expressing their opinions in public.“But when the teenage grandson of Holocaust survivors let it slip that he was Jewish, former friends started hissing insults at him in class, he says… looked like a gun took him aside and said they would execute him”.6 Children are being taught the same values that their parents and elders grew up with, which allows for the spread of anti-Semitism. Children should not have to hide their race and religion in fear of being harassed by their fellow classmates. School is a place for students to feel accepted and safe, not bullied for their race and religion. In 2018, a majority of people preach equality and acceptance, yet there will always be a group that only wants to believe what they are taught growing up. The parents and grandparents are the problem in the situation of spreading the hate, because if it was not for them advocating it, the children would most likely not have the mindset of hating on certain people based on their race or religion. “Schools, parents, and media not only communicate information and teach skills, they transmit values and beliefs as well. Nazi schooling and extracurricular activities sought to inculcate racial hatred to an extraordinary extent”.7 Even today, evidence shows schools in Germany are brainwashing their students with information about the Jewish population that was taught to students well more than 50 years ago. Lessons taught to children by teachers or people they look up to is likely what they’ll believe and fit into their lifestyle. These children are being exposed to such negative information toward Jews that ideas, that should have never started or existed, are still being passed on to current and their future generations that will lead to the continuation of anti-Semitism.
The world still faces huge waves of racism, including hate crimes toward Jews that are still ongoing in Germany and elsewhere. The hatred continues to grow due to older generations influencing how the younger generations perceive Jews. The continuation of the hate crimes have affected the lives of Jews in the worst way as evidence of the hate appears in media stories daily and weekly. Anti-Semitism is not decreasing. Instead, it continues to thrive as beliefs that began hundreds and hundreds of years ago still linger in the world today.