Roots of hate

"On the eve of the Holocaust, antipathy toward Europe's Jews reached epidemic proportions. Jews fleeing Nazi Germany's increasingly anti-Semitic measures encountered closed doors everywhere they turned. Why had enmity toward European Jewry reached such extreme heights? How did the levels of anti-Semitism in the 1930s compare to those of earlier decades? For example, were Germans more anti-Semitic than their European neighbors, and, if so, why? How does anti-Semitism differ from other forms of religious, racial, and ethnic prejudice?" "In pursuit of answers to these questions, William I. Brustein offers the first truly systematic comparative and empirical examination of anti-Semitism in Europe before the Holocaust. Brustein proposes that European anti-Semitism flowed from religious, racial, economic, and political roots, which became enflamed by economic distress, rising Jewish immigration, and socialist success. To support his arguments, Brustein draws upon a careful and extensive examination of the annual volumes of the American Jewish Year Book and more than forty years of newspaper reportage from Europe's major dailies. The findings of this informative book offer a fresh perspective on the roots of society's longest hatred."--Jacket. ; Regards the dynamics of European antisemitism in 1870-1939 as an evolution and popularization of four spheres of anti-Jewish narratives: religious, racial, economic, and political (while before 1870 only two narratives existed, the religious and economic). This quaternary narrative gained credence from the effects of declining economic well-being; increased Jewish immigration; the growth of leftist support; and identification of Jews with the leadership of the political left, multiplied by the fear of revolutionary socialism. Examines leading moderate daily newspapers from 1899-1939 in five countries: France, Germany, Britain, Romania, and Italy, as well as annual volumes of the American Jewish Year Book for the same period, to trace the dynamics of antisemitism at this time and its spatial and temporal variations. Notes the main events which were conducive to a rise in popular antisemitism, like economic crises, the Anglo-Boer War, the Bolshevik Revolution, the dissemination of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in the 1920s, the Nazi takeover in Germany, and the government of the Popular Front in France in 1936. Denies the thesis of the uniqueness of German racial antisemitism, but admits the uniqueness of pre-Holocaust antisemitism in its intensity and multi-dimensional character compared to other prejudices against minorities. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)