Europe Against the Jews: A Review
Lessons from a Half Century of Antisemitism
In the midst of a slow election news cycle and a rapidly evolving political news cycle, I had concepts of two posts I wanted to put out: one with distinctly bad vibes and one with mostly good vibes. People often prefer to hear bad news before good news, so I am releasing this post first. Tone aside, this post is very different from my typical election analysis, but I found this book so informative that I feel I need to share what I learned from it. This is by no means a comprehensive summary of the book, and I implore everyone to give it a read. You can even rent it from your library, like I did.
My Review
I recently finished Götz Aly's 2017 book, Europe Against the Jews: 1880-1945. This book impressively and solemnly catalogs antisemitic actions that took place in Europe from 1880 to 1945 and beyond. These range from disturbing rhetoric espoused all over the political spectrum to massacres committed by people of most European nations. For the most part, Aly excludes mentions of what the Nazis did in Germany from 1933 to 1945, not because these actions don't qualify as antisemitism, but because focusing on this period in Germany misses the broader story of how such actions became normalized and accepted by the general public. Of course, one cannot understand European antisemitism without knowing what the Nazis did. Aly mentions how local officials collaborated (or refused to do so) under Nazi occupation, how the Nazis were inspired by earlier actions of ethnic cleansing, and how they created a permission structure for other antisemitic leaders to deport their Jews where they would be out of sight and out of mind. Without understanding the decades of history preceding the Holocaust, it can seem like an aberration of extreme prejudice. In reality, however, it was the logical conclusion of how millions of Europeans felt even decades before.
One common theme in this period is how much antisemitism was fueled by opportunism rather than prejudice. Much of this book focuses on the years immediately following World War I when continental Europe was mostly destroyed and impoverished. As ethnic groups united behind a common nationalistic goal, they painted Jews as foreigners living on their land despite not being entitled to it. There are several examples of this. In Greece, city officials in Salonika, which had a large Jewish population, “switched the market day from Sunday to Saturday as a way of shutting out Jewish competition” (132). These officials were trying to “economically damage the Jews and the Muslims still living in Western Thrace” and claimed to be improving their “citizens’ quality of life”. These “citizens”, of course, did not include Jews. From 1918-1919, Poland and Ukraine warred against one another. Jewish communities remained neutral, but both sides used this against them, calling Jews traitors. One Polish author accused Jews of “halting the Poles’ economic self-defense,” while the Polish government “limited the rights of Jewish tradesmen” with the goal of driving down competition for Polish laborers (199-200). Later on, under Nazi pressure, Hungary expropriated Jewish land assets (224). Several other countries viewed Jewish wealth as a source of government revenue, particularly in fiscally challenging times between the World Wars.
One of the many misconceptions I had before reading Europe Against the Jews was a sort of Great Man Theory perspective of Nazi Germany in which Hitler single-handedly throttled a relatively progressive country into total antisemitism. While Hitler was unique in his single-minded antisemitism and eventual seizure of totalitarian control – most other Europeans placed their antisemitism below other priorities such as nationalism and monarchism – he was working with a population already primed to scapegoat Jews for its many problems. Most people already know that a big impetus behind Hitler’s rise to power was the hyperinflation in Germany caused by the Weimar government printing money to pay off its debt to Allied nations. This is true – although the truth is much more detailed than this – but I’m not convinced Hitler needed to convince many Germans to oppose Jews. Antisemites rose to power in Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Croatia, Lithuania, and other nations without the help of a generational economic catastrophe. While it seems obvious in hindsight, the climate in Europe at the time made Germans blind to the fact that they were electing history’s most evil human.
Another misconception I had was that after the Holocaust, Jews were treated much better in Europe. On the contrary, when Jews returned to their homes, they found them occupied, often by former friends and neighbors. These interlopers would often express disgust at the sight of the returning Jews, refusing to return their belongings and wishing they had been killed in the camps. Pogroms continued in Poland and Greece (among others), and Stalin systematically cut Jews out from the upper hierarchy of the Soviet State. To quote Aly:
“In 1939, 9,855,500 Jews lived in Europe. By 1945, that number was 3,833,000. In the parts of Europe under German control, some 1.4 million Jews survived the Holocaust. [...] Between 1948 and 1951, 715,000 European Jews left for Israel, while 120,000 emigrated to North America. Six years after the end of the Second World War, more than half the Jews who had escaped the German machinery of murder and lived outside the Soviet Union voluntarily left Europe” (307).
Voluntarily!
Here I’ll make one of two conclusions I came to about this book: while I was already concerned about the Trump administration, the words and actions of him and his followers closely align with several elements of the antisemitic playbook. This is not to say that Trump himself is a Nazi or even an antisemite (although Elon Musk has been throwing up Nazi salutes left, right, and center). However, Trump and the MAGA crowd utilize similar rhetoric to what Europeans used to demonize Jews, and his administration is currently implementing policies that mirror early-stage ethnic cleansing.
The second-most powerful person in America currently is Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. At the infamous Madison Square Garden rally in late October, Miller asserted that “America is for Americans and Americans only”. Similar phrases have been used by outward antisemites, such as the French newspaper La Libre Parole, whose motto was “French for the French!” Its publisher, Édouard Drumont, argued in 1892 that Jewish migrants were “flooding” France and threatening to ruin the country (75). Additionally, in the late 19th century, Russian Interior Minister Nicolay Pavlovich Ignatyev used the phrase “Russia for Russians” to justify his antisemitic policies. These policies restricted where Jews could live, prevented them from moving voluntarily, and “imposed special taxes on kosher meat, rental income, and inheritances” (44-46). Steven Miller, Trump’s right-hand man is, at worst, accidentally copying a phrase used by virulent antisemites.1 The similarities don’t stop there. Trump and his loyalists argue that immigrants, both illegal and legal, are economically and culturally threatening our nation by drying up the state’s resources, taking American jobs, and committing crimes. Meanwhile, in 1920,
“The New York Times quoted the publisher of the Jewish Daily News, Leon Kamaiky, describing the situation and dreams of Polish Jews as follows: ‘If there were in existence a ship that could hold 3,000,000 human beings, the 3,000,000 Jews of Poland would board it and escape to America.’ Statements like this even made their way into congressional debates. Within a few years, the prevailing opinion had come to hold that immigrants endangered American standards of living, imported poverty, caused the growth of slums, and exposed US workers to cutthroat wage competition” (136).
Parallels between European antisemites and Trump extend beyond rhetoric and into policy. As part of its strategy to stifle illegal immigration, the Trump Administration is engaging in large-scale raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) to deport those it deems to be living here illegally (although some of those being targeted are living here legally), scare those already living here without an immigration status into leaving, and deter migrants from entering the country. The strategy of intentionally making life fearful for those living here is a practice used in Greece in 1924. Legislators passed laws that made it harder for Jews to earn a living, including banning work on Sundays and requiring contracts and other financial documents to be written in Greek rather than Hebrew. According to Aly, this was done to make “those affected ask whether they should emigrate” (152-153). Again, my point is not to call Trump a Nazi, but rather to illustrate the clear and worrisome connections between his ideology and that of antisemites.
My other argument is that Israel has to exist for Jews worldwide to feel secure. This is not an endorsement of any actions taken by the Israeli state, but a world without a dedicated homeland for Jews was simply untenable. Depending on the context, Jews were accused of being both communists and greedy capitalists. Jews were stripped of rights, humiliated, deported, and killed, simply for being who they were, and this occurred in dozens of countries independently of one another. Even before the Holocaust, thousands of Jews were being killed annually for no reason, and no amount of capitulation was going to stop anyone until Hitler put antisemitic brutality front and center in his regime. In every country they lived in, Jews were viewed as foreigners. Yes, Europe learned its lesson, but with the rise of far-right parties across the continent, can anyone be sure that the same prejudices won’t resurface? This is not to mention the majority-Muslim countries that persecuted and expelled nearly all of their Jews the second they could. Here are the total numbers of Jews that live in some countries:
Algeria (where my Savta grew up): <200
Egypt: 100
Iraq (where my Saba grew up): 4
Libya: 0
Morocco: 2,100
Syria: 0
Yemen: 0
Poland: 4,500 (there were 3 million before WWII)
Although I still feel relatively safe in America, I feel slightly safer knowing that if shit hits the fan here, I have somewhere I can go that will accept me. I may not like the current leader of that country, but I also don’t like the leader of my current country. Disliking a country’s leaders or actions does not discount arguments in favor of that country’s validity.
I’ll conclude with the following thought. Although it is one of the most documented events in world history, World War II is among the most misunderstood events by the general public. There’s a common saying that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it, but I’d argue that the malignant forces in America’s politics are too aware of history and actively trying to repeat it. Now more than ever, it is crucial to have a solid understanding of the past to prevent nefarious actors from weaponizing our lack of knowledge against us. While ignorance is a powerful tool, education is infinitely stronger.
What’s Next?
If you made it here, thank you for reading this! I know that was probably a heavy read (though I did warn you at the beginning), but reading Aly’s book opened my eyes more profoundly than most books I’ve read. I’m not certain I’ll read another book in the near future that I’ll be able to write as much about.
As stated above, I have another post lined up soon that will surely have better vibes than this. It will also be more similar to my previous posts. Once again, thanks for reading!
And here is a picture for Substack to use as the thumbnail:
To quote Vice President J.D. Vance, if Trump is America’s Hitler, then Miller is America’s Goebbels.