History of jews

History of the Jews
Of the two terms, Jews and Judaism, the former denotes usually the Israelites or descendants of Jacob (Israel) in contrast to Gentile races; the latter, the creed and worship of the Jews in contrast to Christianity, Mohammedanism, etc. In a separate article we will treat of Judaism as a religious communion with its special system of faith, rites, customs, etc. (See JUDAISM.)Here, we shall cover the history of the Jews since the return from the Babylonian Exile, from which time the Israelites received the name of Jews (for their earlier history, see ISRAELITES).
This history may be divided into various periods in accordance with the leading phases which may be distinguished in the existence of the Jewish race since the Return in 538 B.C.
The Holocaust
A boyraises his hands when the Jews leave the bunkers after the submission of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

During World War II the Holocaust occurred, in which Nazi Germany carried out systematic state-sponsored extermination (genocide) of approximately six million European Jews.
Main article: The Holocaust
In 1933, with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany, The Jewishsituation became more severe. Economic crises, racial anti-Semitic laws, and a fear of an upcoming war led many Jews to flee from Europe to Palestine, to the United States and to the Soviet Union.
In 1939 World War II began and until 1941 Hitler occupied almost all of Europe, including Poland—where millions of Jews were living at that time—and France. In 1941, when the invasion of the Soviet Unionbegan, Hitler ordered the initiation of the Final Solution—an extensive organized operation on an unprecedented scale, aimed at the annihilation of the Jews of Europe and French North Africa. This genocide, in which six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying cruelty, is known as The Holocaust or Shoah (Hebrew term). In Poland, more than one million Jews were murdered in gaschambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp alone.
The massive scale of the Holocaust, and the horrors which happened during it, heavily affected the Jewish nation and world public opinion, which only understood the dimensions of the Holocaust after the war. After the war it became clear that it was impossible to leave the Jews in the hands of the nations of the world anymore, and efforts wereincreased to establish a shelter for the wounded Jewish nation.

Christian antisemitism

Main article: Christianity and antisemitism
In the Middle Ages Antisemitism in Europe was religious. Though not part of Roman Catholic dogma, many Christians, including members of the clergy, have held the Jewish people collectively responsible for killing Jesus, a practice originated by Melito of Sardis. Asstated in the Boston College Guide to Passion Plays, "Over the course of time, Christians began to accept... that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for killing Jesus. According to this interpretation, both the Jews present at Jesus Christ's death and the Jewish people collectively and for all time, have committed the sin of deicide, or God-killing. For 1900 years of Christian-Jewishhistory, the charge of deicide has led to hatred, violence against and murder of Jews in Europe and America."[1]
During the High Middle Ages in Europe there was full-scale persecution in many places, with blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres. An underlying source of prejudice against Jews in Europe was religious. Jews were frequently massacred and exiled from variousEuropean countries. The persecution hit its first peak during the Crusades. In the First Crusade (1096) flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were utterly destroyed; see German Crusade, 1096. In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. The Crusades were followed by...