jews

‘What do you know about the pogroms?’ I asked with a twinkle in my eye.

‘How long have you got?’ John said, setting his plate and cutlery down on the table.

I eyed the today’s choice. John was known to put together some strange combinations but this looked fairly ordinary – fish fingers, baked beans and green beans. I raised my eyes and shrugged. We’d finished our duty. I’d made short shrift of my soup and was hanging out in the dining hall, helping to keep the lid on things.

‘Well,’ John said, starting into his meal. He alternated between chewing, swallowing and speaking. ‘The name itself is Russian, translating as destroy or devastate. The pogroms largely refer to the anti-Semitic riots in Russia in the 19^th and 20^th century,’ he waved his fork in the air as though conducting, ‘though you can trace it back to the very early days of the church and it goes on  right to this day. I suppose, you could say that Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany in 1938 and then the Holocaust was the culmination of the pogroms. But it hasn’t stopped. Anti-Semitism is rife.’

‘So what was behind it?’

‘In the early days of Christianity there was a drive to gain converts and the Church sought to drive a wedge, to deliberately vilify Jews. They labelled them as Christ killers and claimed they held satanic meetings, sacrificed Christian babies and put their blood in their bread. That sort of stuff.’

I snorted. ‘But Jesus was a Jew. All his family were Jews. All his disciples and followers.’

John chuckled. ‘Yeah, but you don’t allow facts to get in the way of a good conspiracy.’ He was polishing off his meal in no time at all. ‘Mythology is not based around fact. The Church needed to establish itself. They demonised Jews.’ He shovelled in a mouthful and chewed pensively. ‘It wasn’t helped by the Church being firmly against usery. No Christians were allowed to lend money for interest. The Jews took over the banking and many of them became exceedingly wealthy. That created a lot of jealousy and outrage. Christian businessmen accused the Jews of running things for their own benefit and charging exorbitant rates.’

I frowned.

‘There have been many outbreaks of anti-Semitic riots throughout Europe and in England. Jews were vilified and persecuted. The Church stirred it up and did nothing to suppress the depiction as Christ killers and unscrupulous, miserly bankers. Religions like to malign the opposition. It animates the faithful.’ He grinned. ‘There have been numerous examples of Jews being targeted and driven out, synagogues burnt, murder, looting.’ He shrugged. ‘You only have to look at the actions of the Crusaders. They went out of their way to massacre Jews on the way to the Holy Land. Saw it as a holy act. I suppose it came to a head in Germany. The Nazis blamed the Jews for the loss in the First World War.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘There was the stab in the back myth,’ John explained. ‘It was believed that Germany lost the war, not through military defeat, but because internal forces, including the Jews, were actively stabbing it in the back.’

‘No truth in that?’ I queried.

‘I suppose every government has their dissenters and forces at work trying to undermine it, but no, nothing majorly untoward. The main thing was that, following the war, everyone was suffering extreme hardship but a number of prominent Jewish businessmen were seen to be prospering. Like many, they had made profit out of the war. The Nazis seized upon that to scapegoat them using the underlying anti-Semitic sentiment to unify their party in a common cause. Just like the right is doing with immigrants today. They built this up as ‘The Jewish Problem’ and then ‘The Final Solution’. Every movement needs its nemesis. The Jews fitted the bill.’ He pushed his plate to one side.

I glared at a student who was threatening to throw a chip at another boy. He saw me glaring and ate the chip, looking as innocent as could be.

‘At first Hitler was all for shipping all the Jews out to Palestine and setting up a Jewish state, but that idea soon went out the window. The mood turned. They planned out the Holocaust and decided to eradicate all the Jews once and for all.’