Anti-Semitism: It Didn't End With Hitler

"The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew." -Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925

Adolf Hitler, http://www.flickr.com/photos/26449307@N04/2479937085/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Adolf Hitler is the most infamous anti-Semite of all time.  Before he took power in Germany, he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a book that laid out his flawed reasoning for his hatred of the Jewish people.  When he took power, he fed on an existing sentiment of anti-Semitism in Germany.  He manipulated the beliefs of his people and was able to first take away civil rights from German Jews, and ultimately send them, and Jews from all around Europe, to their deaths during the Holocaust.

While this, the death of approximately six million Jews, has been the worst episode of anti-Semitism, it was not the only incident in which Jews have been persecuted.  In the United States, a country that prides itself on justice and liberty, “during the 1930’s and 1940’s, a virulent anti-Semitism pervaded American society.” (Streitmatter)  Jews were barred from some companies and schools, and were ostracized by their neighbors.  Like Hitler, a priest and radio host named Father Charles Coughlin fed on his anti-Semitic audience to gain popularity.  He compared the Jewish people to a deadly disease by saing that “‘there is a Jewish question.  It is just as unfortunate that it exists in the social world as it is that cancer exists in the physical world’” (Streitmatter)  During the same time period in which Hitler was blaming the Jews for all Germany’s problems, including losing World War I and the Great Depression, this American was spewing the same hatred on a smaller scale.

Charles Coughlin, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:charlescoughlincrainedetroitportrait.jpg

Luckily, anti-Semitism has died down in the United States, but it unfortunately still exists.  Just last week, Delmon Young, an outfielder for the Detroit Tigers, was arrested for a hate crime in which he yelled anti-Semitic epithets at a Jewish man in a hotel.  It culminated in a physical altercation.  While Jews haven’t experienced the same level of persecution as people from other minorities in this country, it has always exists and it still exits.  While I hope that all racial, ethnic, and religion persecution will one day end, I think it is illogical to think that this is actually a possibility.  People like Adolf Hitler, Charles Coughlin, and Delmon Young will always exist.