Policies of Nazi Germany towards Jews and the Policies towards Jews of other Countries in Europe - Essay Example

Introduction The Jews have a long history that runs down through an ancestry of biblical ties of the second millennium. Their traditional beliefs and culture are said to have influenced the biblical antecedent and by extension the Christian fraternity. They are known to have achieved political independence in the early 1300 BCE only to be defeated by their neighbors in the later years of 37 BCE. Since then they have remained a minority society in various countries except in Israel where they form the majority population. Their history has been tainted with records of frequent persecution that has seen their numbers vary unpredictably over the years. By 2009 Jewish population is estimated to have been at least 0.2 percent of the world’s population with the greatest proportion residing in Israel and the United States (Dashefsky 4). In earlier years before the world wars and after their defeat their Diaspora population was fairly distributed among the greater Soviet Union and the Americas. However the events of the world wars and the rise of the Nazi government saw a massive influx of Jews moving out of the Soviet Union back to Israel and into the Americas. This paper will interrogate the policy based treatment of the Jews by the Nazi Germany as compared to other foreign policies of fascist countries in Europe towards Jews Nazi Germany’s policy towards Jews Germany is bestowed with the richest account on Jewish antecedent among European countries. The Jews are said to have arrived in Germany as early as the fifth century and influenced German tradition to a great extent especially in trade and commerce. Their status would however take a turn on the onset of the enlightened absolutist’s ideology of statehood and the supremacy of states. This led to the identification and segregation of the Jewish community with some rejecting them while others embraced their value to their society. This led to the capitalist approach to the Jews which ensured that their lifestyles were highly regulated to ensure that their stay was on a value basis. This saw them rise to a sizable professional class that controlled and thrived in the urban population. It stimulated the anti-Semitic movement that found its way into politics. The equal rights for the Jews in Germany went unquestioned up until the rise of Adolph Hitler in 1933. He brought to the surface the ensuing discrimination of the Jews and pushed it further to legal discrimination and violence. From then on the Jewish lifestyle was torn between assimilation and nationalization. The assimilation ideology bears its origins in the early 19th century as an eschatological message. The idea was a result of the desire for emancipation alongside the will for religious revolution as well as fervor for re-evaluation of the political paradigm. The conflict and coexistence between the nationalist society and the romanticist movement allowed the Jews to reside among the Germans and assimilate. Unlike the previous administrations that had opted to either assimilate or nationalize the Jews Hitler enacted laws that officially denounced Judaism as a race and terminated the citizenship of all the Jews including those who had been nationalized. This led to the unification and agitation of the German Jewry who came together to promote immigration and provision of basic services to those that had been deprived of them subject to the new laws and policies. The implementation of the final solution in 1941 was considered as the epitome of German policy on the eradication of the Jews where they were forced to wear a yellow star for identification and transfer slums and reserves. These were used as corners for forced labor and murder through gas chambers. It culminated from a series of other racist laws such as the law for the restoration of the professional civil service that was enacted to deny the sticking Jewish professionals from being employed in the government. Other policies would later be formulated to restrict the Jews from joining the army. Subsequently the enactment of the policy saw majority of the Jewish population move from Germany up until the fall and end of the Nazi reign. The German Jewry there after consists of those who fled Germany and returned after the end of the Nazi government, those who stayed and were not discovered and those who took refuge in Germany after the war (De Lange 45). Other European fascist countries policies towards Jews Jews in other fascist countries in Europe received similar treatment in the early middle ages. The most prevalent ideology at the time was one of assimilation. Various countries allowed them to join in to their societies as long as they agreed to abandon their own culture in favor of their assimilating country. This saw the rise of new cultures such as the Spanish Jews who developed to the ladino. These were however very few as the Jewish cohesiveness to their beliefs and cultures was very powerful (Kaelble 226). On the onset of the enlightment period however the assimilation policy spread across western Europe with the professional and urban class Jews in many countries opting to adopt the new policy and cultures of Christianity. The ideology of assimilation picked up speed in the 19th century among many fascist states up until the world wars. In Italy the Jews under the fascist rule were given little regard. This was mainly due to the small nature of the community and hence the victims were fewer they followed the earlier trend of the Germans in assimilation up until the start of the war. Persecution of Jews in Italy was therefore rather mild and it’s estimated that at least eight out of ten Jews in Italy survived. The placement of Mussolini as the fascist puppet head of The Republic of Salo marked the shift into the German exclusionist policy that saw Jewish citizens arrested murdered or imprisoned in compliance with the then colonizers –Germany. This however did not vitiate the fact that as long as Italy remained sovereign, it was a safe haven for Jews from the Nazi Germany and parts of France. Rome’s policy was not as brutal as the German approach since they segregated the few Jews into a ghetto which was then surrounded with a wall to contain their population. They however would increase in number and develop into a different dialect. The reasons for the expulsion of Jews during the early times were on religious reasons. Roman policy towards the Jews presents a rather adhoc structure that responded to individual situations. Their treatment of the Jews was not intolerant neither did they tolerate them. During the reign of the republicans Rome's policy was an undecided collection of rules that would later allow the forth coming administrations to interpret the policy to suit the circumstances and situations. There was no Jewish policy per se and therefore they were treated reasonably. This can be attributed to the uncertain nature of the Jewish loyalty to the empire. This was further implied in the roman treatment and accommodation of Jewish law religion and order (Rutgers 74). In France the treatment was similar to that of the Germans. At a point in time the Jews in France had autonomy and freedoms just like any other French men. The population in France comprised of two main groups which were given different treatment and perceived differently. The French Jews had settled in France and could actually speak French. They had agreed to be assimilated into the French culture and were not much of a problem to the government. The immigrants on the other hand posed serious cultural economic and structural problems. They were seen to threaten the local population by taking up all the available jobs leading to unemployment. They also posed the problem of western influence one that the French had been trying to avoid from the Russians and the Americans. These immigrants also posed the threat of creating international conflict which France was not willing to get into. The French therefore developed a policy that pursues the rationale of the lesser of two evils. They opted to be tolerant to French Jews and intolerant to immigrant Jews. The immigrant Jews were therefore surrendered to the Germans while the French Jews were allowed to remain under the protection of the government. The mid 19th century therefore saw France shift its policy of tolerance to immigrant Jews to intolerance. They would however later revert to their original tolerant policy to allow for replacement of the soldiers who had died in the war. After the invasion by the Germans the French needed a scapegoat. They used the Jews as the scapegoat to recover from the shock of the defeat in the war. The French enacted a policy that deprived the Jews of all their rights and interests to comply with German pressure. With the onset of the German context and final solution policy, France had no option but to comply with the German police in rounding up and deporting Jews of all kind. They finally went to full intolerance. Conclusions Germany had a great impression on the general policy on the Jews in Europe and other parts of the world. Fascist nations in Europe were faced with hard choices in as far as policy especially with the context and pressure of the invasion of the Germans. Europe’s trend in Jewish policy followed a common trend from tolerance and assimilation at the beginning and before the 18th century to intolerance and high handedness in the early mid and late 19th century. All along however, the Jewish policy in Europe has been fueled by self interest oppression and persecution. Works cited Dashefsky Arnold. World Jewish Population, 2010”.North American Jewish Data Bank 2010 (2010):4 retrieved on 02/04/12 from: http://www.jewishdatabank.org/Reports/World_Jewish_Population_2010.pdf Kaelble Hartmut. “The European way: European societies during the nineteenth and twentieth century”. Berghan, London (2004). Print Muehlmann Shaylih “Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Sociology” (1951): 74–828 print. De Lange,Nicholas, The Illustrated History of the Jewish People. Harcourt Brace and Co. New York, (1997):45 print Rutgers Victor. Roman Policy towards the Jews: Expulsions from the City of Rome during the First Century C.E. Classical Antiquity, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1994): 56-74 print Read More