Nazi Germany and the Jews: 1933-1945
Though the British had declared their support for the idea of a Jewish state in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, progress was slow. They turned from ambivalent to hostile; in the 1930s, the British began blocking Jews from immigrating to Palestine, frustrating Zionism’s fledgling hope that it could create a viable state. Then, between 1939 and 1945, t
... See moreDaniel Gordis • Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
On November 9 and 10, 1938, the Nazi propaganda, rhetoric, and discriminatory laws bore their inevitable fruit. After a mentally imbalanced Jew killed a German official in Paris, Germany and Austria erupted in hate-fueled violence against Jews. Jewish homes, synagogues, and businesses throughout Nazi Germany and Austria were destroyed. Two hundred
... See moreDaniel Gordis • Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
IN 1935, THE NAZIS passed the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped German Jews of their citizenship and outlawed both marriages as well as extramarital sexual relationships between Jews and Gentiles. Immigration to Palestine reached another all-time high of 61,000 Jews. In all, between 1933 and 1936, the Jewish population of Palestine grew in size from 2
... See moreDaniel Gordis • Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
The generally invertebrate and even subservient response of many of the churches in Germany to the rise of the Nazis, however, was in part the result of centuries of European anti-Semitism, and in even larger part the result of cowardice.