Anti-Semitism

For Adolf Hitler, Anti-Semitism was not a policy but more as a religion. In the Germany of the 1920s, stunned by defeat, and the ravages of the Versailles treaty, it was not hard for a leader to convince millions that one element of the nation's society was responsible for most of the evils heaped upon it.   The Jews, like other Germans, were shocked by the discovery that the war had not been fought to a standstill, as they were led to believe in November 1918, but that Germany had been defeated and was to be treated as a vanquished country. If Hitler had not embarked on his policy of disestablishing the Jews as Germans, and later of exterminating them in Europe, he could have counted on their loyalty.   Instead, he hated them and treated them as a different race.   A race that he wanted exterminated and removed from this planet.


A man named Sastre spoke out about the Jewish people and the definition of anti-Semitism. He made reference to the notion that anti-Semitism arises not against individual Jewish people, but against the "idea of the Jew." That is to say that the Jew is recognized only as a member of a group associated with fear and disgust, not as an individual capable of being anything but the stereotype of the Jew.   In conclusion, the Jew is judged not by his action or words but simply by the fact that he is a Jew, and the preconceived idea of what this means.